I am Moving Away from Traditional News.

By Thomas Baekdal | Monday, August 24, 2009 | Section: publishing

For the next 30 days I am going to be relying completely on non-traditional news sources. I am going to stop reading traditional newspapers, watch any news on TV, or listen to the radio.

The point is that I keep getting told by members of the traditional press that social news cannot possibly replace traditional news. And I think it already has.

Despite that I am still reading 3-4 traditional newspapers (online) every day. It's the first thing I do every morning, just after checking my social feeds. And every morning a feel frustrated by the time I have wasted reading them.

Here is an example of news headlines on CNN:

None of these have any relevance to me as a person. None of them is useful for what I have to do. How can news about a local ferry accident in a very remote region of the planet be relevant to me living in Europe?

The only story that is even remotely interesting is the one about the lab burgers', but that is only because I like future trends.

Traditional news is a huge waste of everyone's time. And I am going to stop using them. At first for 30 days, but if it goes well... forever.

How I will read the news

Instead of turning to traditional sources (newspapers, TV and radio) I will be relying on 3 different sources:

  1. Social News, via sites like Twitter, Facebook
  2. (Social) news aggregators
  3. Varies RSS feeds, although none from traditional news companies.

If someone post a really good article from the New York Times on Twitter, then I am still going to read it. But I will not go the their site to see if there is anything new.

Join me!

You should do the same. Try it. Join me!

And if you do, tell me how it went, or post an article about it on your blog (and send me the link).

What do you think? Could you live without traditional news for 30 days?

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