Questions and More Questions

A) Where do you get most of your news?

It's sort of embarrassing, but I watch Channel 6 news every morning. My husband and I are "couch potatoes”--if we keep entering enough Couch Potato codes, we'll win one of their raffles eventually and maybe a trip to Hawaii or dinner at a restaurant or tickets to a concert we won’t attend. I understand that this is primarily fluffy local news, but for some reason I watch it anyway. On Tuesday morning, during a commercial, I switched over to CNN and learned that there had been a skirmish between North and South Korea in the Yellow Sea. I also learned that middle school students were taken hostage in New York. And that there was a high speed chase from Orange County to San Diego. None of that news was on Channel 6.

I also check the headlines from i-Google, which allows me to choose news categories of interest to me and then provides what somebody—or the computer—thinks are the top five stories of the day. I chose World, U.S., Entertainment, Science/Tech, Health, and Korea.

If I had more time, I could stay up to date on those categories and others, but there really is no time.

Before starting school a year ago, I read the newspaper every morning. I loved the randomness of unrelated stories lying next to each other on the page. I loved the randomness of learning things that I might never have chosen to learn about—that I wouldn’t have even existed. I stopped receiving the paper when I started school. It went unread too many mornings and seemed like a waste of money.

Reading about newspapers and news and leisurely learning random information makes me nostalgic. I feel uninformed.

Have you ever subscribed to a newspaper?

I started reading the paper when I was age 13 and had a paper route. I started with Dear Abby and the comics and moved on to the front page and the editorials. When I got married, I decided I should learn about sports and so I started reading that section in order to know what my husband and his friends were talking about. Later on I read the business section. Pretty soon I felt compelled to read the entire paper.

How much news do you get online? Could you recognize any of the trends described in the articles?

In “A New Literacies Sampler,” Lankshear and Knobel summarize Michael Schrage, who argued that “viewing the computing and communications technologies of the internet through an information lens is ‘dangerously myopic’” (12).

The information is there, but it takes time to process.

As described above, I get some news online, mostly from i-Google, but there's not enough time to search out the information needed to understand what's really going on in the world. Just because the information's available doesn't mean I am asking the questions needed to find the answers. It takes time to learn the right questions. It takes times to ask them. It takes times to understand the answers.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

B) What are newspapers for? Does it really matter if they go away?

Newspaper journalists take the time to ask the questions I would ask. As Shirky notes, print media "does much of society's heavy lifting . . . covering every angle of a huge story . . ."

Print media allows journalists to slow down and explore different aspects of a story. It allows the reader to synthesize what he or she already knows what is new. Newspapers provide information that raises questions I wouldn't normally ask. Not because I am not interested, but because I don't know yet know that I am interested.

Lasch says that the "proper role of the press is to extend the scope of debate by supplementing the spoken word with the written word" (294). Newspapers propel me "into arguments that focus and fully engage" my attention so that I become an "avid seeker of relevant information" (291). They push me beyond my “preferences and projects” and raise questions in my mind. Once I’ve got the questions, I can do all kinds of research.

We’re moving in a week, and after reading all these articles, I’m thinking of subscribing to the paper again. Or checking MSN.com more often. I can scan headlines and feature articles quickly, and if I decide to read one in-depth, the website will suggest others that may interest me. In that way, it functions like a newspaper, introducing me to new material, material I probably wouldn't have sought out.

Shirky says strongly, "Society doesn't need newspapers. What we need is journalism." In theory, I agree with him. I'm just not sure how to gain exposure to new information without it.

C) Which of the arguments in the readings did you find most persuasive?
What do you think will or should replace newspapers, and if we are heading
to a new system for news, what principles ought this system try to promote?

Shirky says, “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.” Print media is costly to produce. And by the time it’s printed, it’s out of date. The web gives us up-to-the-minute information.

At the same time, I’m a little nostalgic. I love newspapers. I love the gift of information, tossed in my driveway every morning. I love the way stories cover so many angles of an issue. I love the prospect of learning new things, things that challenge my ideas, things that influence my opinions.

News stories on the web tend to be shorter and to touch on the basics of stories. They answer the “what,” but they don’t explore the “why.”

And generally speaking I only click on news stories that affect my life. As Sunstein describes in “The Daily We,” I can customize or personalize my entire “communications universe.” I can listen to people who agree with me—or I can listen to no one.

I like having my viewpoints challenged. I like learning new perspectives. Sometimes I change my mind. Sometimes I don’t. That’s not really the point. The point is I am engaged with the world.

Most of us don’t engage anymore.

Lasch describes newspapers of the 19^th century as “journals of opinions in which the reader expected to find a definite point of view . . .” (291). He says that it was no accident that “journalism of this kind flourished during the period from 1830 to 1900, when popular participation in American politics was at its height” (291). He states that 80 percent of eligible voters went to the polls and suggests that this was because political debate, communicated in print and in public forums, propelled citizens to get involved. He claims that when newspapers became more “objective,” citizens began to disengage.

Maybe the news got too intense. Maybe as the world became smaller with World Wars and American men dying in countries across oceans, Americans decided they didn’t want to know everything. Maybe there was just too much information to absorb.

Maybe the Internet just makes things worse. There’s so much information out there, and we can’t learn all of it, so rather than make choices, we just focus on fluffy news and where’s Reuben and Couch Potato points.

In an ideal world, and I love ideals, we know what’s going on around us. We care. We engage in thoughtful debate and work together for solutions. We want to find the best, most productive ways to disseminate news, whether that is print media, internet, television, or combinations.

So we sit down and identify the end goal and the problems that keep us from achieving that goal, ascertain possible underlying causes for failure to achieve that goal, and then propose possible solutions and the advantages and disadvantages of those solutions.

Assuming the goal is to further democracy, government by the people, then people need to know what's going on. They need to understand that we all operate from certain biases--there is always an argument and a point of view. Rhetorical education is invaluable, the ability to identify persuasive strategies, isolate claims, and evaluate evidence will help them determine how to get involved.

On the other hand, maybe the fact that we are increasingly aware of divergent perspectives, the idea that there may be no one right answer to the problems facing our world, will keep us from getting involved no matter what kind of news we are exposed to.