Do you watch the news on TV? Do you read a newspaper daily? Weekly? At all? Do you listen to a newscast on the radio? How old are you?
If you’re over 50 you might remember when an average midsize city had three television stations and two newspapers. Add in news headlines on the radio and you get maybe ten news sources.
In some families like mine, watching the news was a daily ritual. The local news was part of dinner time, followed by national news delivered by Huntley, Brinkley or Cronkite. And at some point in my youth, there were two daily papers. Mom read both, daily.
Now with cable television and the internet, we have hundreds, maybe thousands of news sources, with the potential for timely updates 24 hours a day. Does anyone still use TV or newspapers as a source for what is going on? And is the source age-specific?
My impression is that younger people don’t care much about news (by news, I mean something other than the latest on Britney’s sister’s baby), and when they do care, they hit the internet for the details. I also assume older people care more about news but choose newspapers or TV for the stories. But I might be wrong about some of those assumptions.
A recent online AARP article says that “Forty-two percent of users 50 and older check the Internet for news daily or several times a day, compared to 18 percent of users under 20.”
Note that I’m over 50 and saw that story on the internet.
Keeping up with the news is still a habit for me and I still like turning pages with ink-stained hands. But I only buy a newspaper about two or three times a month. My main news source is television, followed closely by the internet. Most 20-somethings I know don’t care about the news no matter what the source, even though the same 20-somethings regularly use the internet on their cell phones and use texting constantly to spread the news within their own personal community.
Any thoughts on this from your perspective?
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P.S. - I picked up a paper twice this week. A friend was profiled in a local daily paper and I was profiled in a local weekly. Both stories also appear online and I saw the online versions first. Both stories got much bigger play in the print versions; hers was front page in the Food section with several more photographs and mine was on the front page of the paper. And both stories were about blogs. Slow news week out here in the boonies I guess.
A Little Ditty
3 weeks ago
5 comments:
I don't read newspapers and haven't in years. I get my news online. I usually check it once a day - in the mornings before I head to work. I have a choice of conservative, ultraconservative, or ultraliberal news radio on my commute. I usually pick the conservative station because they generally avoid bringing too much of their politics into the news. I like to get a general feel for what's going on locally and in the world, but that's about it. By and large, nearly everything that's on the news has no affect on me (and is something I cannot change anyway).
I think that's probably the big change between your generation, mine, and the next. I apologize for the sweeping generalizations I'm about to make, but this is my impression of the state of things today. I think your generation was one of activism. You grew up in post WW-II society where you saw great changes in the country and the world. Even so, the world was a much larger place for you then. Distant countries were, well, distant. Even events that took place across the country were far away from you.
While you all were making scads of money in the '80s, my generation was growing up without a clear place in the world. The Cold War ended, computers changed civilization overnight, and we were lost. Therefore we (my generation) became much more self-absorbed - essentially an entire generation suffering an existential crisis. What was left for us to do except reap the benefits of our parents' hard work?
The young today are simply lost. They're growing up in desperate economic times when they don't know where or if they'll get their next paycheck. In a way, they're a lot like my grandparents' or great grandparents' generation, growing up during the Great Depression. I think it likely that this era may be looked at by future historians as another Depression. Will this lead to a generation of frugality? Unwilling to risk change over a safe position? I wouldn't be surprised...nor would I be surprised to see my children's children's generation one of activism following the apathy of their parents. And so the cycle repeats.
Anyway, just my meandering thoughts on a Saturday morning.
Thanks for stopping ot comment while I was passing through Digby.
I am forty-something, so here's my mid-point perspective: YOung people do seem more concerned with celebrity gossip han I think is reasonable, but I'm also surpirsed at how many older people are, too. To me, that is all non-news and hardly worth mentioning, but many people talk about celebritis as if they were interesting scandalous neighbors. Maybe it has something to o with how immediate access is to gossip now? As for true news, I have to admit I don't keep up much. I scan through the twice-weekly county paper to stay aware of local news and also to scan for items abot people I know. Most days, I glance at the paper of the closest city. I try to stay aware of what is going on politically, although it often grieves me to much to listen. Maybe if I lived in a country with a less malignantly stupid president I'd listen more often. I don't know if any of this is relted to my age or ust because of my own personality, though.
Great post! You're right, the way we gather our news info is so different than it has been in the past. I don't have cable so watching the news is sketchy. I totally miss having CNN or something of that sort. I rely on the internet and bits of the paper when I get a chance to read it at work. My favorite newspaper is no longer in print,The Weekly World News, so I have no idea what's been going on in the fabricated world. (ha-ha).
Congrats on your local paper write-up!! Very cool. Keep clicking and blogging.
ian - maybe you were meandering a little, but it is very well thought out meandering. Yes, my generation was full of activists but I think we also began the mainstream news rejection philosophy too. I feel lost not knowing what's going on but I also feel frustrated when I do because it seems I can't do anything about what's going on.
Oh, and I'm still trying to figures out who in my generation was making scads of money because I didn't start making what I'm worth till the mid 90s. :)
Ms Citizen - agree with your presidential observation... counting the days! And about the celebrity gossip, it amazes me when "legitimate" news operations spend any time at all covering Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. That should be left for the Entertainment Tonight people.
eliz - I'd be lost without cable. NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Fox (reluctantly), ESPN, and in the DC area there is even a cable-only 24 hours a day local news channel. Of course, my new favorite newspaper is that weekly that did the story about my blog. :)
My primary news source are traditional news outlets, but via their online sites. For example, I'll check out my local paper's website (it's easier for me to read online), the local TV stations' sites (I can catch up on the news when it's convenient for me rather than a set time), CNN, BBC, the New York Times, my favorite national magazines and some PBS news programs (Like Bill Moyer's Now). Having said this, I limit my news consumption to several times a week ... plus any time something in my RSS feeds interests me. And while sensational headlines like those about celebrities might grab my attention, I tend not to read that type of thing. Time is too precious and that sort of news isn't usually relevant to me.
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