Pasha Zolfaghari’s Media Tracking

Before I started tracking my media habits on an Excel sheet, I wanted to make sure that I made it as authentic as possible. I didn’t want to subconsciously watch or read more news than usual just because I wanted to look like I was a worldly guy.

Every morning when I wake up, the first thing I do is check my phone. I look to see if I have any texts, emails, and missed calls before I move onto checking my social media accounts. And the king of them all for me is Facebook. I look to see if I have any notifications, and then I scroll through my news feed to see what’s going on in the lives of my Facebook friends. If any of them post a news article with a headline that I am interested in, I will read the article. So it’s fair to say that if anything of significance happened over night, Facebook would be the news source that lets me know.

Then on the week days, I have a 30-minute commute to USC. During the drive, I will either listen to an NBA related podcast or ESPN radio. In terms of podcasts, I listen to three. One is a fantasy basketball podcast that updates me on the statistics of specific players, one is a comedy podcast that goes through top current stories in the league, and one involves a host doing one-on-one interviews will major figures in the NBA. These podcasts, along with watching the actual games, are how I receive news on the NBA. After tracking my media consumption for a day, I realize that a majority of the news I receive per day is related to the NBA.

The times that I actually watch the news, it is almost always CNN. There are a few reasons I watch CNN: my parents watched CNN when I was growing up, I am a moderate that leans towards the left, and I have a big crush on Erin Burnett. They are the station I trust the most and I almost always enjoy their analysis on current events. On the day that I tracked my media habit, CNN was on in my apartment complex’s gym TV and while I was working out, I saw that the senate hearing of Betsy DeVos for her nomination as Secretary of Education. II was so awe-struck by how she answering questions that I skipped most of my workout and watched the TV. It is not an ideal way to watch the news, but if it had not been on in my gym, I probably would have missed it.

I would say that on average, most of my news intake comes from Facebook and podcasts. I have subscribed to the LA Times though, so I will start getting the weekly paper this weekend. I would usually only want free news services, but I pay for the LA Times because I am new to LA and want to read the city’s top paper. I also pay for cable mainly because I want to watch live NBA games on TV, but I also use it to watch CNN.