Putting It Out There
I can’t stop obsessively reading Jezebel. I try so hard not to geek out on blogs whose authors neither know nor care about my existence, but who can resist something like this?
Yes, that’s what it’s come down to: I don’t want to engage with online and broadcast media outlets that don’t engage me directly. Except for satire sites, the headlines and funnies on Yahoo! News, and LiveScience.com, all I want from my electronic media experience is the hyperlocal, the hyperpersonal, and the hyperspecialized. If there’s something I need to see for work or for general cultural literacy, someone I know will point it out to me, and then I will care. I used to care about current events, God knows I did, but somewhere along the way I lost the will to pay attention. Or I had lost it, until my sons came home from their summer visits with the Protosaurs quoting my parents’ political views.
I disagree with my parents’ political views, but – horror of horrors! They watch the news constantly, and I watch the news not at all. I used to be able to fight back on the strength of what I read in the papers, but now I don’t read the papers. I could fight back for a while on the strength of what I remembered from college and what I read in journals, but now I don’t read journals and I can’t remember where I left my glasses, much less what I studied in college. So I had no ammo when the boys came back talking smack on “socialized health care.” It hurt.
Informal poll: what should I have around the house for the general edification? I figure I need:
- One newspaper: Washington Post or Baltimore Sun? I would personally find the Post more palatable (and more practical as a DC commuter), but maybe I’m not giving the Sun a chance.
- One middle-school reading level current events mag: Time, Newsweek, or U.S. News and World Report (if it still exists)?
- One popular science mag: I like Scientific American.
- One popular cultural mag: surely not People? But if not, what else?
1) Post, DEFINITELY Post
2) ??
3) ??
4) EW!!!!
Got myself a kindle for my birthday and you can get the New York Times for less than 15 dollars a month, daily including Sundays, automatically downloaded daily to your kindle. (It’s really cool because it’s wireless and you don’t even need to plug the thing in, just turn it on and leave it in the same room as the computer.) If you’re still commuting by bus and such I think you’d love it. (Even if you’re driving, you can use the text to speech thing to have the guy or gal READ you the articles.) I’m feeling fabulously well-informed and really don’t read anything else regularly anymore. (Alternately, get satellite radio for your car and listen to the BBC or NPR or somesuch on the way to work.)
For the anonymous commenter — Even better, economically… I have the Kindle too, but wanted to save money. I did get the NYT full subscription. Depends on your needs, but another Kindle subscription called “NYT Latest News” is only $1.99/mo. and gives you enough volume, so that you are up to date, but it doesn’t take a full day to get through:
Click here.
The popular culture magazine I prefer is Entertainment Weekly.
I got into it when I read that Ken Jennings of Jeopardy! fame reads it.
@oldfeminist: YEAH!
@Greg K.: Oh, that’s what you meant.
It’s me, anonymous (but you know who I am Kate Dino). I’m kind of bummed that my kids flunked out of Kumon because i used to look forward to reading entertainment weekly. Actually that would be so cool if you could download it to the Kindle, so that everyone would think you were reading the New YOrk Times or something and being all literary. Does anyone know if that’s possible?