News Reading Habits

The news stories I am interested in on the national level mostly include American politics, especially during the last presidential election.  During the election, I mostly followed the battle for the Republican primary and all the different candidates that were fighting for the nomination.  I was also extremely interested in the Clinton-related scandals in relation to WikiLeaks.  It seemed like every day there were new emails being released.  For international news, I read news about the war against ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East.  Brexit was another big international topic that got a lot of news coverage.  I can’t really follow local news since my hometown is so tiny, but I can get some news from a newspaper that is published in a town about thirty minutes from me.

I usually don’t go searching for news by typing in a web address.  I do most of my news reading on my phone, so I have an app that I like to use.  The app gives me notifications on breaking news and then links to articles on that breaking news.  I would say my favorite news site is either Fox News or Reddit.  I like to get news from Reddit because they are extremely fast to post articles, and they will discuss things as they happen.  When I read news, I usually just read the text.  I don’t really like watching videos or listening to audio stories because I feel like it is a lot easier just to read it at my own pace.  I usually don’t post comments on news too often, I feel like most people in the comment section are just looking to start an argument.

In terms of Facebook and getting news, it seems like it is the best way to get local news stories.  A lot of my friends will post interesting articles about events that happen around my hometown.  It’s always fun to read the comments on those because sometimes I see people that I know.  There are also a lot of…interesting people that decide to speak their mind on the local news posts.  Those posts are usually pretty good for creating entertainment.

I mostly use Twitter for instant updates on sports.  I follow a lot of professional teams and their beat writers.  Following them gives a lot of good insight onto how the team works and you sometimes get a behind the scenes look at the team or league.  The beat writers always post links to their stories that they have published.

I think the only podcast I listen to is from the United States Hockey League.  I do play-by-play for the Madison Capitols, a team in the USHL, so the league’s podcast helps me to keep updated with everything going on in the league.

With news, I want to stick to strictly breaking news.  I hate reading the more opinionated stories because of all the bias that seems to leak into the articles.  I remember one article that turned out to be fake was during the Boston Bombing investigation.  An article on Reddit thought they found the bomber, but it turned out to be just an innocent guy with a backpack.  Everyone was all up in arms and trying to have the innocent guy arrested.