The News: Old School vs. New School

I’m a news junkie.

Everyone (and anyone) who knows me, knows that. I have ‘breaking news’ alerts from many different sources delivered to my phone, a few major websites are bookmarked, I have many RSS feeds coming into my Google Reader, I read the news online daily from various sources, I ‘follow’ newspapers, news broadcasting organizations and reporters themselves on Twitter… just to name a few (I used to even have news headlines and whatnot emailed to me but it became a bit much). I like to know what’s going on not only around me, but nationally and worldwide as well.

I credit that to my dad – for as long as I can remember, he has ALWAYS read the newspaper and watched the local news, the national news, and various channels that cover international news. For as long as I can remember we would, as a family sit in the evenings (usually at dinner) and, talk about what happened that day. Even nowadays when our schedules conflict, when we are all finally home at night, we still do it.

Anyhow, back to the point. If you didn’t notice, I’ll point it out: most of my sources for the news are online. I do still watch the news on the TV sometimes (a lot more during election cycles). Technology has, without a doubt, come far. I can’t even remember the last time I physically picked up a paper to read – even though we get them delivered to our home everyday because my dad still reads them.

I can remember when we had to wait until the next day to read in the newspaper about something, whereas nowadays – it’s readily available to us with a few simple clicks. Sometimes (a lot of times) we know something is going to happen before it happens (especially in politics)!

A few weeks ago, I remember as I was reading an article on a local fire on the website of my local newspaper and I couldn’t believe that the newspaper had gotten the article from the Associated Press! Why a local newspaper had to use an article from the AP to cover a local fire had me annoyed and amused at the same time (more annoyed at the time). Anyhow, I noticed it again a week or so ago and that time another thought came to my mind. As sad as it is that a local newspaper is looking for outside sources to write and publish articles for local situations, the unfortunate reality is perhaps that the local newspapers don’t have the resources to cover such issues!

Sure the internet has created great conveniences for us all, but there has been setbacks and consequences as well. Can you imagine how many people have lost their jobs in the newspaper industry because they were no longer needed?

It got me thinking about it on a larger scale. Are people in the news industry losing their jobs because of the internet? Or are more and more people turning to the internet for their news because a newspaper simply is not enough.

At first, I thought that the answer was simple – people in the news industry are obviously losing their jobs because more and more people are choosing to get their news elsewhere (mainly the internet). Don’t you think, however, that it is also equally plausible that more and more people are going to the internet because they have a variety of options and can hear from ‘different voices’ on a particular issue? We don’t subscribe to many newspapers, but can very easily subscribe, or at least view, to many different sources online. Let’s face it – a single newspaper can’t objectively provide everything the internet resources can. And I don’t know about you, but I want to know a few different sides of a story.

So now I’m curious. Do you guys read the news? If so, do you do it the old fashioned way (a physical paper) or go the internet for it all? Is one better than the other in your opinion?

P.S. Don’t forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I’d love to hear from you.