Falling in love with journalism again
My mother used to be a journalist. This meant that instead of growing up with stories of princesses, my brother and I grew up with stories of evil correspondents, crazed night shifts (for some reason tap-dancing was often involved), cutthroat competition for stories, and crying producers. Our personal favourite was the story where a friend of my mum’s was going to get fired so he simply ran away from his boss and hid in a cupboard. He managed to keep his job.
It is because of these stories that I have always been interested in news. I never thought of news as being boring and dry, something which gloomy adults discussed. To me news was fantastical and magical. News was the ultimate bed time story, it allowed the huge world to enter into my small purple bedroom.
As I have grown into a gloomy adult, I haven’t lost my fascination for news, but I have probably become more cynical about it. My view of it is no longer so straight forward. No longer do I see the word news and equate it to truth.
Now, it’s one thing to know that fake news exists, it’s another thing to know what to do about it. Yes, I would like to read everything from every news outlet but it’s just not going to happen. For one thing I am not a millionaire I cannot afford to subscribe to all the publications, which gives you access to the best journalists. Another thing, I don’t have time to read everything because I am (supposedly) busy studying for my degree. So I am left with a difficult choice, what do I choose to read? What is going to give me a wide perspective in a short amount of time?
Answer: Compass News. Compass allows me, for free, to access to a huge amount of brilliant journalism which I wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. It is cleverly curated so that in a short amount of time I can see a wide variety of perspectives. It gives me the information I need to start to de-code what is happening in the world. But while it is really useful it is also still fun — it appeals to gloomy (semi) adults because it also preserves the excitement of news.
My fairy tale kingdom of news may have morphed into a more realistic realm, one filled with echo chambers and political ogres. But it is still a realm worth preserving, and hopefully Compass News will help to do just that.
