New Year, new Media Diet
The New Year is approaching quickly, and we all know what that means. After all the holiday gifts, pie and roast beef have been processed, we’ll set our sights on 2018. It’s finally time for the newer, better versions of ourselves.
Resolutions represent a healthier future. No more refined sugar. No more trans fats. No more 12-drink benders. But lost in all these resolutions is a diet that has nothing to do with food: our media diet.
Every year, great media outlets publish wrap-ups (like this or this or this) showcasing some of the most important news events of the year. If you read your newspaper every day, subscribe to a variety of magazines and listen exclusively to NPR, you probably feel like you thoroughly grasped all these news events. If you’re like most of us, however, it’s natural to feel like you missed a lot.
Staying up-to-date can be tough, but it’s important. It makes you a better-informed citizen. It makes you a smarter voter. It helps you understand where to direct your activism and charity. And, bonus points, you can look a lot smarter at parties. Nothing screams effortless intellectual like bringing up the corporate alternative minimum tax at happy hour.
Most of us will never be current event experts. Jobs, families and social lives deserve attention, too. But we should all make an effort to stay at least somewhat informed. These end-of-year wrap-ups should be refreshers; they shouldn’t be the first time we are hearing about important issues.
When you’re drawing up your resolutions for the new year, remember your media diet. Staying informed doesn’t take much effort. It just takes about 10 minutes each day of reading or listening in your car. It’s a lot more pleasant than eating kale with every meal, and it’s a lot easier than doing an hour of cardio every day.
At Gazet, maintaining your media diet is simple. Discover editors who’ll periodically pick the best news and media that passed you by, and even become an editor yourself.
When 2018 begins, we can’t promise you’ll actually go to the gym every morning. But we can promise you a fun, exciting place to work out your brain.
