The Digital Side of Me

Picture source from http://carolinecircle.com/?p=4253

News reporting today is almost instantaneous. We have information about breaking news within the snap of our fingers by either social media or notification on our cell phones. There’s also a much broader amount of topics in the news that we didn’t have back in news reporting’s earlier days: entertainment, sports, certain types of world news, so on and so on. For me, personally, I am mainly interested in sports, weather, and stories on things like crimes or natural disasters (hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, etc.) These can be local, but also go all the way up to international news, particularly Japan. I don’t usually follow up on stories unless it’s something major like Hurricane Michael or the current Jayme Closs case.

Considering I live in a small suburb of Middleton, I don’t usually follow news of my hometown. Nothing really dramatic happens where I live, so it’s rarely (if ever) featured on the news. The only times I recall we’ve been in the news was for two house fires and the Dane County flooding that happened last summer. If something were to come up that sparked my attention, I would probably read about it online or Google the story for updates.

There are three sites that are my go to’s for getting my news feed: NBC 15, the Washington Post, or the New York Times. They are the sites I find the most trustworthy and informational when telling stories to the public. My other sources are usually through Google or on my twitter feed. If the topic interests me, I’ll click on it to read more and go to additional sites to either confirm what I’ve read is true and/or I want more information about the story.

My favorite news site would have to be NBC 15. It does its very best to remain unbiased on different stories, especially if political, gives accurate information, and does its best to keep you updated by the hour if it’s something news breaking (car accident, a nation wide criminal investigation, etc.) They always try to give you as much information as possible and cover a vast range of topics. Weather, crimes, job ads, politics, sports, whatever it may be. If you’re interested in learning more about it, NBC 15 almost always has it covered.

Do I use Google to find news stories? Of course, I use Google. I don’t trust any search engine that isn’t Google. I use it for everything pretty much on an everyday basis. Whether it be reading about the news, researching something for school, checking for correct spelling on a word, I always turn to Google. I can 99% of the time find what I’m looking for on Google within the first three pages that come up as a result.

When I read about news, I usually read through text or look at images with the captions underneath them. It’s very rare that I click on a video to get my news. I only usually do that to see footage of a natural disaster currently taking place (hurricanes mainly). Reading and looking at photos is the quickest way for me to process and learn new information of any kind. I have always been a visual learner, so I take in things and remember it better if I look at it rather than listen to it. Another explanation for why my notes in class are always seven to ten pages long for each unit.

My favorite format of getting news is probably reading text. You would think being a visual learner it would be the pictures, but I usually look at those after I have read the text of a story. I feel I get the most information out of the content the writer has written more than I get from looking at a bunch of pictures. Photographs help illustrate what the writer is trying to convey, but the big, important parts of the story are from the text itself. The other one is my Twitter feed. I follow a lot of news stations nationally and internationally. News anchors and people I follow include Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker, and a few news reporters from San Diego, California.

Have I ever interacted with news sites or emailed content to one of the writers, no. Not that I can ever recall. The closest thing I can think of is when I nominated a teacher for the Glass Apple award a couple times back in high school.

To make certain what I’m reading is true, I always read more than one story from a different website to cross check references and information. I can’t exactly recall a time where I read a false story other than stuff I see on trash magazine such as the Global Inquirer or something along those lines. The more times I read something on a different site, the more I am able to trust that what I’m reading is fact and actually occurring. My advice to people, always read more than one news site. Even the ones you trust most can sometimes make a slip-up in their facts. If other sites say the same thing, chances are that information is true.

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