Rethinking News: Part I

For Rebekah:

Sorry this is over a year late.

Who has the time to keep up? Well, you do. The key is to organize the inflow of information and honing one's browsing techniques, although this is not the key to fully availing oneself of the press' benefits. First though:

Welcome to the 21st century. The first step is finding a RSS reader. Forever, I just used blogger's because I was lazy. The problem with this one is that it doesn't help with categorizing your feeds and only allows excerpt updates. Here's a good vid for what RSS readers do:


Browsing techniques is simple but difficult. Skim, prioritize, schedule, lengthen attention-span, etc. Reading a 5-page story in the morning is a mistake for most of us. Still, being able to sit down and read 5-pages at some point is indispensable. These are common sense things that we need to be reminded of. Develop discipline in clicking the "Mark as Read" button, you don't need to scan 400+ entries obviously. Skim on most. Go to topics that are relevant. Avoid spam emails.

As mentioned though, this is not a good way to fully utilize news. The next part is kinda long, and then I'll post what you asked for.