News All Day, Every Day
Being in a journalism program has completely turned around my media consumption. I used to only read from a select group of websites that reported on auto and music industry news every day in addition to reading whatever articles popped up on Facebook and Twitter.
Now that I’ve learned about how important it is to maintain good media habits and to read the news voraciously, I’ve stepped up my game. I downloaded several news apps and get their push notifications. On a base level, this keeps me more informed than the average person who consumes their media the way I did before starting at USC. I read whatever articles are fed to me this way when I get time during the day. I’ve subscribed to notifications from CNN, LA Times, BuzzFeed and Quartz — any more than this and I’d be driven crazy. I also use Quartz’s app regularly because it serves as a digital newspaper. It provides short stories and a casual tone. This makes the app’s content easy to digest any time of the day — though their notifications are usually the most flippant and irritating, particularly their stock market haikus.
Most of the news I read is free, though I subscribe to the LA Times since they are the local paper and their content is well-made and often immediately relevant. This being said I also follow even more sources of news on Facebook, including NPR and Washington Post, to receive a diverse range of angles and opinions. The Atlantic is also another source I follow on Facebook because their opinion writing represents an uncommonly diverse range of perspectives — I find myself evaluating their writers’ opinions critically. For car news, my true passion, I follow auto journalists and publications on social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). I still check their sites regularly.
As a whole, I generally expect my news to be free with the exception of the LA Times. I consider them to be important enough to pay for their content and would possibly do this if other sources restricted the types of stories and articles I really enjoy. This means for a lot of news outlets that they have to get me to go their website so I can see their advertising. Unfortunately for them, they have to get me to link to their web content through Facebook since I’m a piece of human garbage and use Ad Block on Chrome on my desktop and laptop (I love this and never want it to go away). As such I see their ads on my phone only.
I think the way I consume media speaks to the way the business model has to change. I’m not seeing as many ads as the current one requires in order for it to be sustainable. I never go to a homepage on my phone and generally link to content that has been shared. As someone going into this industry I need to come up with the solution to make sure people like me are somehow monetized to keep the stories and articles I love alive.
