Save Time keeping up with the News

Are you wasting your leisure time keeping up with the daily news? Much of the news is:

• Irrelevant or not of interest to you.
• Speculation or opinions rather than fact.
• Repetitive or rehashed stories.
• Poorly or inaccurately reported.
• Useless gossip about celebrities.

This article looks at changing news consumption patterns and how we can save time obtaining the news. Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net I should clarify early that - clearly some people use their 'news time' to unwind. Whereas, for others there are too many other things to do in their leisure time. By changing the way we consume the news we can free up time for other things.
Where do most people get their news? As recently as 2008 TV was still the top source followed by the Internet. Source: Pew Research Center for People and Press However, patterns of news consumption is quickly changing, and the following list shows how my news intake (and many others) has changed.

1. Newspapers

Like many people I don’t obtain much news from newspapers anymore. Many years back I read the newspaper daily, but found that much of the news repeated itself from day to day. A large portion of my newspaper would go to the bin unread. Now, I have cut back to one newspaper a week (the weekend paper, which usually covers the big events of the week). I also subscribe to a quality International weekly news magazine.

2. TV news

While TV news is still the main source of people’s news, I personally avoid it. I am not alone. TV news intake is in decline, and especially among younger generations. Typically the only time only I watch the TV news in rare cases of “must see” events (although I don’t really need to go the TV for that anymore). The big drawback of the TV news is that you don’t choose the content and hence (as with newspapers) much of it is irrelevant.

3. Online news

I now obtain most my news from the internet. This enables me to quickly skim over the news and only drill down into items that interest me. It saves me time (and money). Initially, I mostly viewed the news via a desktop internet browser. Now I prefer to obtaining my news from my smartphone browser, when I have a break. (eg – waiting for train). The growing trend now is of course to do more reading via tablets such as the iPad. A big advantage of online news is that it up to date and obtainable anytime of the day.

4. Custom news services

The internet has also brought the capacity to personalize the your news using such features as:

• RSS feed reader sites. Personally, I use www.googlereader.com to obtain website updates automatically.
• Setting up news alerts on topics of interest. I must admit I don't use this much, but from time to time I have used the news alert feature provided by Google.

In summary:

Results of my changing news consumption habits are – I spend 5 minutes a day keeping up with the news on weekdays. I mainly do this using my smartphone. On the weekend I spend about 30 minutes reading a weekend newspaper and another 30 minutes reading an international news magazine. It works for me! Tell us what works for you. Related CraveTime articles

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