The stories I heard at home, from my parents around the dinner table, was more of the local news stuff. My Mum and Dad would tell us about what was going on, starting off with their work and then talking about the town and continuing to go a little broader. My brothers would talk about the news from their schools, generally the middle or high school, and then I would share my news that I learned from elementary school. Now, we didn’t sit down and say, “Here’s the news I have for the day,”, it was more like us re-telling our days and sharing what was going on, in a family style. But I recognized this as some form of gathering “news”, something that was relevant in my life.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know what news was; I would always be the one to hurry downstairs in the morning to turn on the television for news on if there was in fact a snow day. But I would just pay attention to the ticker on the bottom of the screen with the school names, not the actual news itself. Eventually, as I got older and watched more television, I found myself uninterested in the news. I remember hating the format. It felt over the top to me, with the music and bright graphics, and even the voices that the anchors and reporters were putting on. It felt theatrical to me. To this day I still find myself turned off by television news.
Of course, there are so many other forms of news, including radio, internet, and newspaper, which is how, when I was a kid and wasn’t exposed to television, also gathered my news. I remember my Dad and I always listened to 95.7 fm on the way to school, in which they would always have news during that time. I remember getting the Eagle Tribune on sundays and reading the front page, sports page, and the sunday funnies. I also remember how we had the Comcast homepage for the internet that had all the news items, most of which I would click on because I was curious about them. These, for me, were my news sources throughout my youth.
But I would never go out of my way to search for news. These were convenient tools in my life, which I used. It only provided, however, a survey of what was really going on out there. I would be lying if I said I feel comfortable with how much news I digest on a daily basis. I think the problem is that news is so available and easy to access that it’s almost too easy. We just assume it’s there, so we don’t have to really pay attention to it or go out and look for it. We, as a youth, take it for granted. We don’t view it as something that is not there, that is something that we have to fight for. I think we basically censor ourselves and therefore suffer for it. I don’t think journalism necessarily needs to satisfy our needs any differently, I think we as people need to open our eyes and use what we have. The information is around us.
Unfortunately, I don’t see it getting any better. As technology gets better and news gets even more accessible than it use to be, our laziness in actually paying attention to the news and trying to understand news goes down. Hopefully people will take a more active approach, but the only way for that to happen may be for our rich news to be severely hindered
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