Each day we are bombarded with news and information about events and developments that are going on where we live and places elsewhere. I want to comment on the general nature of the news we hear each day to give you an idea of how I view the news we are bombarded with each day.
I believe that monitoring the news is important because if you do not follow the news you will have no idea what is going on in the world. However, I do not believe constantly monitoring the news will benefit you more than monitoring the news just occasionally because most news events and developments are completely irrelevant in the big picture.
- I have a news aggregator program that enables me to gather news headlines and updates from various websites of my choice throughout the Internet onto one screen. I probably receive up to 500 news headlines per day, and I check this program several times throughout the day in search of news headlines to recommend on my blog (the rotating sentences just above my blog posts are the news headlines that I recommend). Usually, I only find perhaps four to five news headlines a day that are relevant for us to have a good understanding of the important things that are going on now and/or relevant for us to have a good understanding of what is likely going to have in the future.
Most news stories we hear about only concern yesterday or today. This is the type of news that we will forget about in a few days or weeks, and are thus news stories that we should ignore. Few news stories concern topics that will impact us in the next few months or the next few years.
I have access to my local newspaper everyday and I receive five local channels that run several local news broadcasts throughout the day. Despite my access to many local news information sources, I do not watch these news broadcasts nor do I read my local newspaper (except for the poorly written Sports section which I finish reading in about 45 seconds). The reason I do not follow local news at all is because local news covers topics that only impact the local area for short period of time.
- My suspicion is that local television news reporters probably forget about most events they cover within a couple of weeks after they report on the event. If these news reporters forget about the events they report about then why should we care about these events?
I monitor the news for events and developments that impact the world in the long-term because these events and developments impact everyone. These events and developments are difficult to find in the news because the media is often concerned with just reporting news about yesterday or news that impacts people in the short-term. Unfortunately, the media’s news coverage is completely backwards because many long-term events and developments often have more impact on people than what takes place in the short term.
I will share news headlines and developments that I find important with you on my blog either in a “recommended headlines” section or if it is really important-a blog post of its own.
