My News Consumption
This exercise made me realize that my consumption of news varies greatly depending on what I have scheduled in a day. On the two days I tracked my consumption (Jan. 17–18), I wasn’t consuming news that often because I was in school. I also noticed that most of my information came from Twitter or push notifications. I can handle about 10 minutes of news at a time while reading online/on my phone. If I had tracked my consumption on a Sunday or instance, the outcome would have been different. On the weekends I get a physical newspaper (usually the LA Times) and read the entire thing. This takes a few hours. I also noticed that I generally read my news as opposed to watching or listening to it. I don’t have a television at my apartment and I don’t usually drive on weekdays which explains why reading is my go-to. When I lived with my family, I would watch at least an hour of news every night and listen to news every morning while I drove 20 minutes to work. I noticed that my reading habits are spread relatively evenly between my phone and laptop. I’m usually on my laptop while at home and on my phone while on the go. Apparently, I hardly ever share articles either. Just one (about how hot the average temperature was worldwide in 2016) made the cut. I don’t like to share articles that often unless I really think they are important because I want my followers to actually open them. I think that the way I access my news and how much time I spend reading is normal for a student’s lifestyle and am interested to see what my peers wrote.
As horrible as it is, especially considering the fact that I’m a journalism student, I’m not that willing to pay for news at this point in my life. If I won’t pay for news, I feel like that means most other people my age and younger probably don’t want to either. Maybe news organizations can focus more on selling ad space online or on their apps to make money. I like the bundles that include online access and a physical newspaper at least a few times a week. I’m willing to pay for something like that once I graduate and have a steady income. I think that push notifications and posting articles on Twitter are the best ways to reach myself and other millennials. For push notifications to work of course people have to have the apps downloaded. In order to make people interested enough to take the time to go to the app store and actually download an app they have to produce solid and interesting content that will make people come back. Buzzfeed has done a great job at this in my opinion because they produce a good ratio of real news and fun content like GIF stories and quizzes. In order to keep a news organization growing in 2017 I feel like it is necessary to bring some degree of entertainment value.
