

"If the news is that important, it will find me" - parker
http://www.mathewingram.com/work/2008/03/27/if-the-news-is-important-it-will-find-me/

======
BrandonM
I thought this was going to be a post about how reading news sites is a waste
of time.

That said, I'm not sure this is the best viewpoint to have. It fails when
everyone holds this viewpoint, because if everyone expects the news to find
him, there will be no news. Someone has to actually be out there seeing what
is going on and reporting on it.

Another problem is that if you've ever played telephone
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers>), you know how information
can get distorted as it gets passed along. A non-trivial issue I've seen in
this US election is that non-news-seeking individuals hear from someone that
Obama is Muslim (never mind that they also have incorrect notions of what
being a Muslim means based on various pieces of "information" that has "found
them"), and that affects their decision (note that I'm not actually an Obama
supporter).

In other words, I think the post promotes something that may turn out to be a
dangerous practice which could eventually result in an echo chamber of news
which fails to reflect many of the things that are actually happening. It
takes true investigative reporting to uncover real conspiracies and dangerous
secrets. Would anyone who believes, "If the news is that important, it will
find me," be willing to do that?

~~~
dreish
I wouldn't call your first point a problem. There are plenty of voracious
newshounds out there that are collectively scraping all available news sites
clean and originating these link posts and chain emails. That's why the
phenomenon exists.

As for the echo chamber, this problem is nothing new. Traditional media copy
ideas from each other with less self-examination than the blogosphere, which
is unabashedly divided into two camps carefully scrutinizing each other for
any inaccuracy to pounce on, and they (Reuters and AP especially) frequently
screw up stories that are outside the core competencies of the vast majority
of journalists, like science.

It's the responsibility of Obama and his supporters to dispel misconceptions
about him, as it ever was, and I'm sure he and they know full well how to do
it.

------
Tichy
I wish, but in reality, I don't know many people with the same interests as
me. I am sure that if anything important to anyone would happen, I would
probably learn about it (like World War 3 starting or something), but other
than that?

Example off the top of my head: I don't think anybody I know would have told
me about the Netflix Challenge yet.

~~~
kingnothing
Are you working on the Netflix Challenge? If not, why is it actually important
that you know about it?

After I started asking myself questions like that, the amount of news I
"needed" on a daily basis significantly decreased.

~~~
Tichy
Toying around with it - certainly not expecting to win any money. Sure, "need"
can be defined in all sorts of ways, not only with respect to news. Perhaps it
would be most efficient to live like a reclusive monk?

~~~
kingnothing
Well, I found that I was spending hours a day on reddit, slashdot, and N.YC
before I realized that most of the "news" I was getting had no direct or
indirect impact on my life. Now, I mostly just read the headlines on the other
sites. This is the only one that I often read articles on, much less comment
about.

It was a huge time sink for me to be concerned about things that don't matter.
:)

