Think Tank
Just the facts: How technology is changing the news
Liz Danzico
Table of Contents
It’s 7 AM on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Bush is sending more troops to Iraq, Hilary is running for office, and New York is in for snow. We start out on a chilly 6 train toward midtown. Even though the subway trip is only a short 20 minutes, Paul (29, website director) wastes no time as he rides, reading and deleting e-mail that’s come in overnight. By the time we reach his office, only the e-mail “that matters” is left.
“It’s not just e-mail. I get all my news on my BlackBerry,” he admits. “By the time I get to work, I know everything I need to know for the day.”
Even though he works as a director for a major newspaper website, Paul gets his news primarily through e-mail—not from the newspapers and not from websites. In fact, he doesn’t visit any news websites at all. It’s just not efficient.
“The only currency that counts, after all,” he informs me, “is time.”
A former RSS junkie, Paul knows he has a tendency to become overwhelmed by too many websites, too many sources, and too many choices. Now, Paul only subscribes to e-mail newsletters that reflect his specific interests and waits for the news to come to him.
“You don’t need to read anything more than the headlines?” I wonder out loud as I watch him scroll through newsletter headlines, never clicking.
“Since I subscribe to so many newsletters, I see the same headlines over and over. I understand the stories because I’m seeing the headlines from so many sources. And I just can sort of infer.”
Meanwhile, it’s 9 AM on the Upper West Side, and Rebecca (38, graduate student) positions her cup of coffee between her ashtray and her iBook, creating a horizontal symmetry of consumption before her on the desk. “I like all my vices in a row. Once I start reading online, I don’t like to interrupt what I’m doing,” she explains.
Before starting her online ritual, Rebecca has already read the New York Times from cover to cover, just as she does every morning, for exactly one and a half hours over a bowl of oatmeal. The ritual is important to her and hasn’t changed for close to two decades. Her apartment suggests similar tendencies, the rooms designed for efficiency, not forgiving a single decoration or item out of place.
Sitting in front of her laptop, she says, “The Times is still where I read the news. I’ve been doing that since college. But reading online updates me on what I’ve missed since the paper was printed last night.”
“Would you say that the newspaper, the physical paper, is your authoritative source for news then?”
Rebecca considers the question. “Yes, I suppose it is. I just don’t trust the coverage I get online as news. It’s just filling in the gaps the newspaper missed.” Her mouse wanders across the links on the Yahoo! News homepage. “But you know, it’s like, ‘tell me something I don’t already know,’ when I look at these sites. I know that Hilary is running for office. I know that we’re sending more troops in. What can I learn here?”
Rebecca pokes around at other sites—Gawker, BBC, NYTimes.com—before closing down her session for the day. We document her every move, digitally recording what she’s said, scribbling notes on her most salient points, and photographing news artifacts throughout the apartment.
Figure 1: We asked people to take screenshots of their browser homepages, to show us where they “start” from digitally. Some included their browser bookmarks, revealing even more about how they organize their sources and what kind of information is included in their daily updates.
