A senior once told us, to be really educated “you must read a newspaper front to back every day.” That may have been true in bygone times, but today, one newspaper may not get you to the the land of the well educated. One newspaper may lead you astray with occasional errors, questionable truths and biased material. Your education will be tainted.
The printed news is dead
Printed news is limited, static, passé, and old the moment it comes off the press. News stories break out so spontaneously, frequently and quickly, no news printing source can possibly keep up. A digital news source can.
Digital news sources print, publish and produce stories as quickly as their staff can write them. Corrections, omissions and erronous stories can be corrected in minutes if not immediately. Recently the Toronto Star erroneously reported that of “Andreescu’s tennis loss to Serena Williams.” Within minutes, the corrected version replaced the erroneous story. Some readers will be reminded of the 1948 Truman-Dewey Chicago Tribune headline.
Furthermore, digital news is limitless in scope, covering many news stories and adding new ones infinitely. Additionally, it can drill more deeply to any story its journalists wish to scrutinize. Daniel Dale, formerly of the Toronto Star, dug into the various statements of President Trump. His deeper analysis revealed Trump to be a liar, tweeting one lie after another after another. This kind of analysis is benefitted by the immediacy of digital news.
The need for multiple news sources
Get a more complete picture of current news by reading multiple sources. The chances of a story being more valid increases with the number of sources writing about it. However, that presents the reader/consumer with another problem…how to keep up with the news and which news sources to use.
Dealing with a singular digital news is too limiting. A singular news sources has a single point of view, a singular bias, a singular mindset. It may try to appear as a presenter of a broader perspective, but it inevitably fails because it is managed by humans and that means readers lose. One news source may support just one political party at the expense of many others. Its criticism or rejection of other parties may exclude its readers from important information, important news.
Which news sources
The choice of news stories depends on one’s own views and one’s news objectives: right wing vs. left wing views; liberal vs. conservative; global vs. local perspective; broad vs narrow coverage; general vs. in-depth reporting. Therefore, a selection of news sources is a subjective and personal matter. A computer can help focus the news sources and its use should be considered by anyone you wanting to stay on top of the news effectively.
The best way manage your digital news sources;
use a computer
1. Start by choosing just two news sources as stalwarts. Stay with just two sources to avoid being innundated.
2. Then add one or two more new sources that become your ‘fluctuating‘ news sources, keeping them as open tabs which can be changed at will.
3. Bookmark your stalwarts or pin their tabs in your browser.
4. Spend just half an hour reading the news each day, skimming through your stalwarts first to see what the big current stories are.
5. Skim through your ‘fluctuating‘ news sources. Eventually you will may find you may prefer a ‘fluctuating’ source to one of your stalwarts. Either replace or add to your stalwarts.
