Online News Consumption

[thamis]

Again thank you to all who took the time to answer the two questionnaires.

I have now almost completed writing my dissertation. As you have shown interest in the subject of online news consumption, I believe some of you might be interested in reading what the result of your answers is.

At the same time, I am interested if any of you have thoughts on the subject. Thus, I will post my dissertation here now! If you have any comments, please feel free to post here, I will appreciate it!

Again, thanks to all who participated!

View Dissertation

[thamis]

Here are my answers as an example:

(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you (newspaper, tv, internet, etc.)? Why?
I mainly read internet news because I can't be bothered to buy a newspaper everyday, internet news is free, AND I can read any international newspaper I want to, not only my local ones.

(2) If your answer to (1) was not internet, define the internet’s position in news gathering for you.
---

(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)
I'm most interested in weird, humourous stories, but I also like to read about international news. You get a much better international picture on the internet than in TV or newspapers.

(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV…), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN…)?
I think websites of offline newspapers (nytimes.com, ft.com, chicagotribune.com, etc) are most credible.

(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?
I read blogs seldomly. I think blogs usually offer the opinionated view of one person. This can be interesting, for example when you read blogs from people who're in Iraq. It's a much closer look!

(6) What types of blogs interest you?
Blogs of people is regions of crisis, as well as humourous blogs.

(7) Respond to this statement:
“The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances.” (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)
Don't want to answer.

(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?
Don't want to answer.

(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?
Nope.

(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?
Yes, no response.

(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?
Wired.com

(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?
Usually humourous stories, sometimes stories that I know interest that specific person.

(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?
I discuss current affairs online and offline.

(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?
Don't want to answer.

[Agathon]

As you may guess, I have a low opinion of the media.

(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you (newspaper, tv, internet, etc.)? Why?

The internet. Most of it is crap, but there is not the social expectation that it will be true, as there is with traditional media, which are crap.

(2) If your answer to (1) was not internet, define the internets position in news gathering for you.

I answered "internet" to #1

(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)

Politics, Sports, Computers, Weird Sex Stuff (i.e. "Seattle Man Arrested in Gerbil Incident!").

(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN)?

Anarchist magazines. The Grauniad. The BBC. The New York Times admitted it was completely FOS over the Iraq thing, so what's the point reading it?

(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?

Multiple times a day. More than traditional media.

(6) What types of blogs interest you?

The ones by lonely, weird girls who confess their sex fantasies and post titillating pictures of themselves.

(7) Respond to this statement:
The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances. (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)

What a steaming pile of crap. Who taught this cretin how to write?

The journalist of the twenty first century will be irrelevant. Software will enable ordinary people to do their own reporting. Why bother reading the account of some hack who's jetted into a tornado devastated town when you can read the responses of a long term resident?

I suppose journalists will continue to write op-ed. That just means more of the pretentious, ill-informed bollocks that we get now.

(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?

Not necessarily.

(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?

Yes. No response - perhaps because my email was mainly comprised of obscenities.

(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?

No.

(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?

I can't think of more than half a dozen web sites that use links effectively (and one of those is wikipedia). Most online news sites apart from Google's suck big time.

(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?

"Seattle Man Arrested in Gerbil Incident!"

No. Seriously. I've sent the odd thing, but there is no discernable pattern to the contents of my sendings.

(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?

Both.

(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?

Both. It depends what day it is.

[Az]

1) internet
3) everything.
4) web versions of RL newspapers.
5) no
7) bleh. Seems like praise to infotainment.
8) I would like them both, please.
9) Not on a newscast.
10) same. No.
11)www.ynet.co.il
12)nope. My friends are low tech.
13) Of course most of it is online!
14) meh. somewhere in the middle.

[BeBMan]

Re: Online News Consumption

(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you (newspaper, tv, internet, etc.)? Why?
- I prefer net news over tv news because I can choose the topics more freely online, while on tv I have to watch what the tv news show me, in the order they want. The Net has overall much more to offer, and I can inform myself more selectively. I prefer net news over newspaper because I don't want to buy newspapers everyday, and I remember with horror the time I did that (mainly because of the tons of old newspapers at home )

(2) If your answer to (1) was not internet, define the internet’s position in news gathering for you.
----

(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)
- Mainly politics, other types only in some special cases

(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV…), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN…)?
- Hm, I don't think there's such a biiig diff between serious online sources, and serious other sources, with some exceptions (I'm not that much into private blogs, and I noticed that even serious online sources sometimes make mistakes, mainly when they try to be very fast)

(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?
- as said above, no. Except monkspider's blog for stories about Mongols and the Second Reich

(6) What types of blogs interest you?
-

(7) Respond to this statement:
“The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances.” (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)
- I thought this goes for any good journalist

(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?
- Not neccessarily

(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?
- Never contacted them, so can't say anything about it

(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?
- No

(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?
- Define "effectively" here

(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?
- No

(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?
- Yes, although during the last time I participated less in big debates, mainly due to a lack of time

(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?
- Neither

[Locutus]

Re: Online News Consumption

Originally posted by thamis
(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you (newspaper, tv, internet, etc.)? Why?

Different things for different purposes. For local news and sport the newspaper, for domestic politics tv, for international and technology news internet. And for any breaking news the internet as well, as I only read my paper and watch tv once a day, while I'm online pretty much whenever I'm awake

If I had to choose one, I'd say internet is the most important one, on account of the breaking news thing.

(2) If your answer to (1) was not internet, define the internet’s position in news gathering for you.

See above.

(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)

Mostly international news, domestic news of other countries (mostly UK, US), technology news. Weird humourous news as well.

(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV…), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN…)?

No one source is ever very credible. You get the best picture by comparing the same news by different outlets. If I had to pick one source, I'd say the BBC (both online and offline), but they have their biases.

(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?

No. Well, I read Oerdin's blog when he was in Iraq, but that was only because I know him and care about what happens to him.

(6) What types of blogs interest you?

See above.

(7) Respond to this statement:
“The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances.” (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)

I disagree, I'd rather have cold, hard facts, we don't have enough of that. This 'storytelling' leads to emotional and biased journalism, which is evil. In essence contextualising facts is good, but usually they are contextualised only as a way to justify some moral/political viewpoint of the author, which is evil. I have this naive opinion that journalists should be objective and reliable I mean, *I* can tell the difference between fact and speculation, between objectivity and bias, but 90% of the people out there can't and will regard a nice 'story' as THE truth.

(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?

Depends on the source. Generally speaking, both sources can provided valuable insights, but one source on its own is rarely entirely objective and truthful (as they say in law enforcement and science: one witness is no witness).

(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?

Yes, the BBC did a news report on the CtP2 source code once it was released, but the report contained a few errors, which I asked them to correct (don't remember the exact details). Never got a response, which of course I thought was a bit disappointing and unprofessional, but since for the BBC is was a very minor issue (it was a rather short report on a rather obscure subject) I can't say I blame them.

(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?

I have reported news tips on Civ/gaming-related topics on a number of occasions (both to mainstream news and gaming sites). Sometimes I don't hear anything, sometimes they'll post a news item (sometimes with, sometimes without crediting/thanking me).

(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?

Apolyton?

(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?

No. If something interesting happens I might provide a link over IM (ICQ, MSN) if someone who might be interested happens to be online, and I've occassionally posted threads on Apolyton or other forums. Usually just stories that might get an interesting discussion going or that I would like to hear someone else's viewpoint on.

(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?

Yes. Then again, there's a fair bit of overlap between the two. Email/IM/etc is a good way to keep in touch with RL friends

(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?

Somewhere in the middle. Want to keep up-to-date on what's happening, but I tend to lose interest on the big stories after a while, as it's usually just rehashing the same old crap. I mean, how often can you say that Bush screwed up in Iraq but is a good christian and that Kerry is (or isn't) a Vietnam hero and still pretend it's news?

[thamis]

@Agathon: Can you post a link to those interesting blogs?

@BeBro: Effective links to me means that they let you look up the source. What does effective links mean to you? I'd love to know!

Thanks for all your replies. Keep them coming.

[JohnT]

(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you (newspaper, tv, internet, etc.)? Why?

TV for two reasons:

a. Its immediacy, its impact.
b. Here in the US, sections of "the news" have been broken down into their own channels - here in Knoxville we have two channels that bring you weather, 4 channels that will bring you sports, 4 channels will bring us local news, and 4-12 channels (depending upon time of day) wil bring you national or international news.

(2) If your answer to (1) was not internet, define the internet’s position in news gathering for you.

Its OK... I'll check on CNN.com every couple of days, but other than that I don't bother with internet news that much, other than stock quotes.

(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)

None. I do message boards, and that's about it. Stuff I'm talking about in message boards, like boxofficemojo.com, linked articles, leads me to online news services, but never do I stay there.

(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV…), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN…)?

The news is most credible when it is being written in the history books, about 2 centuries later.

(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?

No. Except for DanS's - he's linked to his a couple of times.

(6) What types of blogs interest you?

None, really.

(7) Respond to this statement:
“The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances.” (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)

Successful journalists were always good storytellers, by which I define as the ability to take an event and weave a narrative flow out of it.

(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?

It's the blind man telling you about the elephant in both cases. Both have their uses, in their own fashion.

(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?

No.

(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?

No.

(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?

Apolyton.

(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?

A couple of things to Laura.

(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?

Online.

(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?

There are other options, you know. I don't feel information overload because I can always turn the damn TV/computers/etc off.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by thamis
@BeBro: Effective links to me means that they let you look up the source. What does effective links mean to you? I'd love to know!

Oh, don't worry, I just didn't understood what you meant by that. Maybe my brain funtions are temporarily damaged because I had to eat so much x-mas stuff :fed up:

Addition to (7): most her seem to understand it as implementing a certain kind of bias. If that is what he meant I would join the negative views on (7) most here expressed. I thought "contextualizing events and circumstances" it is generally meant as giving background info (what I see rather positive) and (edit: as JohnT said) giving the story a certain narrative form opposed to pure "mechanical" reports of a certain event like "leaders xy met, talked about abc, then went home".....

[LDiCesare]

(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you?
Gossip. I mean, people talking about stuff. They tend to filter the uninteresting tidbits and concentrate on what's actually intersting. You don't get fresh news that way, though.
(2) If your answer to (1) was not internet, define the internet’s position in news gathering for you.
Internet is good for finding out things in detail when I'm interested, because it's possible to look for many source of information without moving or going to buy yet another paper or waiting for the tv news hous or whatever.
(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)
Tech mostly, sports and politics a little.
(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV…), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN…)?
A few sources of info are reliable (AFP...) but mostly I read blogs from here and there, articles from there and some other place and fora. The most opinionated the best because you know where the bias are and you can filter by reading news with the opposite bias.
(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?
Yes, but frequency varies widely. It remains small with regards to other media.
(6) What types of blogs interest you?
Just about anything.
(7) Respond to this statement:
“The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances.” (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)
Does that mean the journalist is supposed to think so I don't have to?
(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?
Yes they are closer by definition of first-hand. They are not necessarily more accurate or unbiased, but at least they let you think about what happened better.
(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?
No.
(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?
Can't remember, but maybe.
(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?
No.
(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?
No.
(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?
Quite balanced.
(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?
I feel more on the overload side, but the problem is that most media will repeat the same stuff and some interesting news don't get past that filter, thus when I'm interested in something I delve, but I don't buy "general" news.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by thamis
@Agathon: Can you post a link to@BeBro: Effective links to me means that they let you look up the source. What does effective links mean to you? I'd love to know!

Ah, that wasn't quite clear to me either. In that case, Apolyton is definitely one of the best sites out there

[RGBVideo]

(1) Internet. TV is full of crap (ads, entertainment referred as "news"). Newspapers are expensive, tedious to read, and usually are biased. Not that sites around the 'net ain't biased, but it's easy to browse different sites around, searching over the same articles from different newspapers is slow.
(3) Uhh, news? World events, global political situation, events which may affect me somehow.
(4) I currently value news.bbc.co.uk as the most credible major source around. I often end up browsing biased underground sites such as the Drudge Report.
(5) Not at all, really.
(6) See (5).
(7) That's not a question: There's nothing to respond. I don't like sexed-up articles if it means twisting facts, but it seems to be fairly common these days.
(8) Depends. You have to know the 'first-hand account' and it's motives in order to answer "yes" here, otherwise no.
(9) No and generally no: If it can't get it's facts straight, then it's a clear sign which indicates that I have to stop reading it.
(10) No.
(11) Effectively, yes. To their fullest potential? I'm not sure.
(12) No.
(13) I don't really have any 'community' IRL.
(14) Information overload? Uhh, not really, I guess. Always eager to learn more.

[Apocalypse]

Re: Online News Consumption

(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you (newspaper, tv, internet, etc.)? Why?

Internet. I go to a military school out in the middle of no where. I don't have access to TV and there isn't good radio reception. Also, although I could get a newspaper subscription, that does cost money and I don't feel like spending it. I actually work for the school newspaper and get money from that

(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)

Usually either sports or national news. Or I find out what's happening back in Houston.

(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV…), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN…)?

Sports radio stations...not really and reason to bend the truth and if someone is wrong, people will call up or e-mail in to correct them.

(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?

Not really.

(6) What types of blogs interest you?

Nothing really.

(7) Respond to this statement:
“The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances.” (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)

It's wrong. Sounds like doing that would just add fluff in at leaat 95% of news. And adding unnecessary text in articles costs money...

(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?

Most of the time, no

(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?

Nope...I'm too lazy too

(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?

Nope...I'm too lazy too....well, actually I've talked to Markos and Dan in the past

(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?

Not off hand. Apolyton is pretty good at it I guess.

(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?

I know I have...mostly just humorous stuff.

(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?

Real-life

(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?
I guess news junkie

[thamis]

To (7): I assume that the word storyteller already implies less impartiality than pure reporting. I'm not sure if I would call it bias though. Pavlik argues that people want "authenticity", which cannot be found in stories that are written according to a scheme (Person X said, Person Y answered, and everybody else thinks Z). I think he's calling mainly for a more interesting style of writing that not only tells the reader what happened, but also why it happened and why it matters to the reader.

I'll be away for a few days, but please keep posting!

[Last Conformist]

(1) Which news media would you define to be most important to you (newspaper, tv, internet, etc.)? Why?

The Internet. It's the one I use the most.

(2) If your answer to (1) was not internet, define the internet’s position in news gathering for you.

NA

(3) What type of news do you mainly read on the internet? (Politics, Entertainment, Sports, Humour, Tech, etc.)

Politics.

(4) Where do you think news is most credible (online, newspapers, TV…), and on what outlets (blogs, forums, NY Times, National Enquirer, CNN…)?

Newspapers, incl newspapers' webpages. I suppose The Economist and Dagens Nyheter are the ones I trust the most.

(5) Do you read blogs? How often, in relation to traditional media consumption?

Rarely. I read alot of newspaper articles for every blog entry I read.

(6) What types of blogs interest you?

Political commentary, ones about culture/literature.

(7) Respond to this statement:
“The journalist of the twenty-first century will need to become a much more skilful storyteller, one who can not only weave together the facts of an event or process but connect those facts to a much wider set of contextualizing events and circumstances.” (Pavlik, J. V., Journalism and New Media, p. 218)

Nice rhetorics.

(8) Do you think first-hand accounts are closer to the truth than a carefully crafted news story?

Sometimes, sometimes not.

(9) Have you ever contacted a TV station or paper about their news reporting (critique, correction, etc)? Why? What was the response? Is it worthwhile?

No, I've never.

(10) Have you ever contacted an online publication? What was the response there?

No, not that either.

(11) Can you think of an online news site that uses links effectively?

Yes.

(12) Have you ever sent a news story to your friends by email? What type of story was it? Why that story?

No, and I don't figure I'll ever will either.

(I submit this question is stupid; I've sent dozens and dozens news stories to my friends via instant messenging. The medium isn't the message.)

(13) Do you discuss news more in your online community or in your real-life community?

Both.

(14) Are you a news junkie or do you feel information overload?

Neither, I suppose.