Week 6 Topic 1

I have a craving for information, and actively read the news on a daily basis, if and when I can. So on a scale of 1 to 5, I would give myself a 4.5 as being well informed of current events across a spectrum of new topics. In fact, the homepage on my browser is a list of links which I have organized according to my interests. The three categories that I go to most are: “News”, “Sports News”, and “Tech News.” Indeed, I know that: Trump claimed any meeting that is son had with Russians operatives was legal, Trump called LeBron James stupid on Twitter, and the response to that tweet has been mostly in support of James, and the latest Mission Impossible movie is perhaps the most popular and profitable film of the franchise.

So, while it is indeed true that I do not subscribe to a print edition of a newspaper, I do follow my favorite newspapers via their online editions.  The source of local news is through my friends and colleagues, their posts on Instagram. What I have found, is for breaking news, social media is a much better source than reading the online edition. This is likely because social media can be updated constantly and continually in real time so it able to provide the most recent news quickly. However, it is often not very specific. Accordingly, social media usually allows me to know about breaking news, which I follow up with the more detailed investigation provided for by the professional media.

        It is tried that most online editions have paywalls. But I refuse to pay for a subscription. This is because, first I believe that important and breaking news should not be a commodity, as it is necessary to produce an informed human. However, non-breaking news and investigative reports can be put behind a paywall, because there is some value added to those stories that make it reasonable to charge a fee to access. Secondly, because breaking news is normally covered by all news outlets, if one story is behind a “paywall” it does not take that long to find another source that offers the story for free.