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Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News

posted by on Tuesday December 13 2016, @05:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the putting-ourselves-out-of-business dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

This story might be helpful to those tearing their hair out about the news lately:

I grew up believing that following the news makes you a better citizen. Eight years after having quit, that idea now seems ridiculous—that consuming a particularly unimaginative information product on a daily basis somehow makes you thoughtful and informed in a way that benefits society.

But I still encounter people who balk at the possibility of a smart, engaged adult quitting the daily news.
...
A few things you might notice, if you take a break:

1) You feel better

A common symptom of quitting the news is an improvement in mood. News junkies will say it's because you've stuck your head in the sand.

But that assumes the news is the equivalent of having your head out in the fresh, clear air. They don't realize that what you can glean about the world from the news isn't even close to a representative sample of what is happening in the world.
...
2) You were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the news

If you ask someone what they accomplish by watching the news, you'll hear vague notions like, "It's our civic duty to stay informed!" or "I need to know what's going on in the world," or "We can't just ignore these issues," none of which answer the question.
...
A month after you've quit the news, it's hard to name anything useful that's been lost. It becomes clear that those years of news-watching amounted to virtually nothing in terms of improvement to your quality of life, lasting knowledge, or your ability to help others. And that's to say nothing of the opportunity cost. Imagine if you spent that time learning a language, or reading books and essays about some of the issues they mention on the news.

Read on for the rest of the list.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Tuesday December 13 2016, @06:55PM

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday December 13 2016, @06:55PM (#440927)

    I turn on the TV news every now and then, but only to keep up with the witch hunt of the day.

    But it is so insanely mindless. It is always the exact same thing "shooting, shooting, stabbing, fire, down tree, hot car death guy AGAIN, and now for the weather.!"

    I mean there must be 1000 positive useful things going on in the world at any given time, but they can't be arsed to report on anything they didn't get handed to them over a police scanner.

    And sadly, most internet news sites are global in nature and won't report on local events.

    At this point I would pay for a good source of local news.

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  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @07:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @07:17PM (#440941)

    WELL WELL WELL LOOK WHO HAS COME CRAWLING BACK. You put the local newspaper out of business with your "internet" and your "tubes" and now you want people to actually report on local topics. Now that you realize the internet is mostly full of morons you want the cat back in the bag. Well too late, the cat is out of the bag, you killed him and there are buzzfeed articles about it.

    • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday December 13 2016, @08:03PM

      by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday December 13 2016, @08:03PM (#440970)

      Yea, ha ha, very true. I have actually tried a local newspaper but after you get past the first two or three entertaining local-ish stories on the front page it is just a shell of anything useful.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @07:49PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @07:49PM (#440964)

    At this point I would pay for a good source of local news.

    Maybe it's not too late, but you had your chance. There is no local coverage for the same reason there is no good national coverage. It is because there are so very few journalists. Everybody wants everything for free. Nobody wants to pay for the newspaper any more, nobody wants to see ads, so news sites had to change how they do business. Cut your costs by cutting the number of journalists, and increase your web traffic with the kind of stories that will bring in viewers (and it isn't going to be a lot of that "boring" stuff about the day-to-day doings at the state house).

    People want to whine and bitch and moan (just look at this entire page of comments) about the "lamestream media" and crap, but if they want to know why things are the way they are, they should just look in the mirror. The funniest part (in a sad way) are to hear the "insightful" idiots bitch about the evil "slant" of the MSM, then go on to say to get the real story they need to go to XXXX site (because that site is "unbiased", and they know that because they like the slant that it has because it reinforces what they already believe).