Online News Diary
Over the course of the past few days, I have kept track of how I consume online news. In doing so, I got a better understanding for what online news looks like and the best ways to produce it. I learned a lot about how much has changed when it comes to getting news. A lot of the news I got in the past was from television, but now I get most of my news from social media and online news sites on my phone.
The site I use the most for keeping me in the loop with what is going on in the world today is Twitter. When something trends I look at what people are saying about it on Twitter and then I find articles on the internet connected to whatever is trending. For example, Colin Kaepernick is in the news because he is now the face of the 30th anniversary of Nike’s “Just Do it” campaign. I found that out because it was trending on Twitter. Twitter, to me, is the fastest way to get up to the second news because everyone who covers anything is on it posting content to their followers. Even the President of the United States uses it, a lot, to share his opinions with the world. My phone sends me alerts from news apps like Fox News and if something big happens, then I go on Twitter and find out the story of what happened. Throughout the day I go on a lot of social media sites and Twitter is one of my favorites. It’s the app I go on to get news more than any other. Snapchat and Instagram are more for talking to friends and socializing, but I get a lot of news from people I follow on Twitter. At the end of the day, I usually go on my computer to check the New York Times. If anything looks interesting I’ll read a few articles, but I mostly read articles that were linked on Twitter.
I also use my phone to get news about sports. Bleacher Report is the app I use the most out of the sports apps that I have. I get alerts from all the major sports and the teams that I am a fan of. Over the weekend, all-pro defensive end Khalil Mack was shockingly traded to the Chicago Bears from the Oakland Raiders. I found that out because Bleacher Report sent me an alert with the story behind what happened as it was happening live. I also use Bleacher Report for articles surrounding sports and to check scores and highlights. Snapchat and Instagram have a couple cool features for posting sports highlights as well. Twitter and Reddit are also fun sites to go on after finding out breaking news, like star players getting traded. Sports fans are a passionate group of people so going on social media to see everyone’s reactions to big news is entertaining to me.
After tracking my consumption of news over the weekend, I realized that I get a lot more of my news from social media than anywhere else by a big margin. I still watch T.V and sometimes read a newspaper, but things happen so quickly in the world and the quickest way to release information to the public is through social media. Once a news station gets to a location or a newspaper is released, the news is old because everything is being released on social media sites like Twitter. I learned that understanding various social media platforms and releasing quality content on those sites is the best way to produce online news in this generation.