48 hours
My media consumption habits are a little embarrassing for someone who calls herself a journalist.
At first I was a little intimidated by the assignment. You want me to log every time I look at the news for an entire 48 hours? I was convinced I would be spending every 15 minutes of the next two days filling out my spreadsheet.
I’m a little sad to say that I have only looked at news 4 different times in the past 48 hours, and one of those times was because I was doing homework that required it.
From the little news I did consume, I noticed almost all of it was through social media. The only time I ever go searching for news is when I’m intentionally looking for something. I noticed that the times I am reading or looking at something newsworthy is when it pops up on my Twitter or Facebook feed. It will be a catchy or interesting headline with a short video that always makes me click to read more. I used to have CNN as my homepage so I would be forced to look at the news every time I open my computer, but even then I immediately type in the website to my email or Facebook and don’t really get a chance to even look at anything on there.
I also noticed that I access mostly everything on my smartphone. I rarely get any news from my TV unless “How to Get Away with Murder” is interrupted by breaking news or my DVR records that extra five minutes that leads into the local news broadcast. This worries me just a little seeing as how I want to be a broadcast journalist, and now I’m really understanding the shift from broadcast to digital.
Just from observing people every day, I can see that most of us are glued to our phones. We can’t go anywhere without our phones. I would rather forget my wallet at home than my phone.
Digital journalism is the future. And the now. Through my own media consumption habits, I noticed that pretty much all of the news organizations present their information the same way on Facebook. AJ+, CNN, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and even Tasty have short concise videos with captions that get right to the point. The videos are rarely longer than 1:30 and there is hardly an anchor or host in these videos. Users are able to consume media quick, fast, and easy and it’s in tune with today’s times.
It’s not necessarily that I’m not interested in TV news or print news, but I feel like my smartphone is all of that in one. There’s no need me for to go seek out a newspaper when I can get the online edition on my phone, and it’s unnecessary for me to watch local or cable news when I’m getting all the important headlines on Facebook or Twitter. Now, if there was a big story like the Paris attacks, or the disappearance of MH370, then I would probably be watching the news or actively seeking out information on it.
