Do you read local newspapers or watch local news?

[JaredL]

diablito,

I used to watch the news here in Pittsburgh fairly regularly and still do on occasion. It's absurd at times. Local news goes for an hour and a half and they clearly can't fill the time. I have no idea why it's so long.

It's also so over the top with Steelers coverage that it's shocking. Last summer the big stories were Hines Ward going back to Korea, Ben Roethlisberger taking a trip to Switzerland as some sort of going back to his roots deal, and then of course the more understandable Big Ben nearly dying in a motorcycle crash. The last story is fine, but the first two lead the news every single day. The #1 story in Pittsburgh was "Hines Ward in day 4 of his trip to Korea, met some people gave a speech or two and was treated like a rock star with people going crazy to see him" and "Big Ben went to a swatch factory" type stuff.

In late summer the biggest story was mayor Bob O'Connor dying of cancer. He went to the hospital complaining of fatigue and was diagnosed with some weird spinal cancer. They thought he would be fine and back to work after a couple treatments but he never left the hospital and died a few weeks later. A few days into it they are doing somewhat standard reporting, interviewing doctors and whatnot. During this major news story (can't think of many possible local news stories that are bigger than the mayor getting treatment for a super rare form of cancer) they cut away for BREAKING NEWS. The breaking news that trumped the mayor's story was that on the second to last play of practice, Big Ben caught his thumb on a shoulder pad and left practice early. They didn't know at the time if it was a shoulder pad or a helmet, and what the effect would be. It reminded me of the bombing during the Atlanta olympics and other stories where the reporters repeat the few details over and over again and then spend a lot of time speculating and interviewing people who clearly don't know any better than the viewer and are also just speculating.

The other thing they do, which is common elsewhere, is to localize national stories by looking at the effect here or the opinions of locals on them. They'll talk to families whose children are in Iraq, old people about social security, business owners about tax issues, and that sort of stuff. It is often really obvious that they are desperately reaching for stories. The worst recent example was when they sent a reporter who happened to be flying through airport security after they changed it to disallow liquids. Pittsburgh is small enough that basically it doesn't matter. The only thing to report is that some people had to throw stuff away and it took an extra five minutes. However, they somehow made a 10-15 minute piece basically repeating over and over again that everything was pretty much normal. I would much rather they shorten the local news to 15-30 minutes and have longer national news.

[Pivotonian]

I've noticed a couple of posts mentioning Australia so far in this thread.

In my opinion local news is very important in Australia based on the variance in sport coverage.

In Sydney/New South Wales the sports sections of both main newspapers are dominated by Rugby League, whereas in Melbourne/Victoria both main newspapers (different papers, but there is a broadsheet and tabloid in each market) focusses on Australian Rules, due to the relative importance of each sport in each state.

It's certainly fair to say that majority of the contents of all the Australian newspapers are available on-line, but during the football season I will often go to one of the few newsagents in the Sydney CBD which stocks that day's Melbourne papers to buy them for the Aussie Rules coverage.

I really just prefer reading it on paper to a computer screen.

[matrix]

Edit: Cliffnotes for tl:dr.

Misread thread title doh!

- rant about "why I don't watch any news" - followed by short piece on "local news is so irrelevant" then "how I choose to keep up with the news"

People watch TV [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] ??

I avoid watching TV much at all - much less TV news.

I subscribe to the "Bill Hicks" theory about the news - you're at home you look out your window and and you see birds tweeting the sun shining - gentle breeze ruffling the trees outside...

You turn on the TV News and straight away you get:

WAR FAMINE DEPRESSION DEATH DISEASE CORRUPTION SCANDAL..

turn off the TV walk to the locale shoppes to get some groceries or down to the pub on the corner for a pint of your favourite beer and some conversation, you walk past a bunch of kids playing football in the park, you spot a young couple in the corner of the pub gazing lovingly into each others eyes blissfully unaware that anything else actually exists at that moment...

Get home later turn on the evening TV news - there it is again.

WAR DEATH CRIME MURDER DEPRESSION AIDS FAMINE WAR DISEASE etc...

When I was younger I used to be glued to 24hour news channels when the first Gulf War happened - or some big disaster went down like TWA800. I got older and looked back at these stories and realised that what TV news told me was happening didn't actually have all that much basis in reality - I see these days that everything gets spun, and manipulated so much that news imo has devolved into pretty much propoganda.

There is an entire new cult of celebrity thats sprung up which I don't get. I really don't care what the latest "reality tv star" does for their morning routine every other wednesday - or what the latest gossip is on some overpaid actor who did an OK job in a film I once watched - or what one of the politicians I didn't vote into office (I seem to always vote for the guys that lose) got upto last week in a "romantic rendevous" with his secretary despite having a wife and two kids...

The other thing that really bugs me about the news is you get 50 minutes of WAR DEATH DEPRESSION etc - and then the last 2 minute story is "Some firemen recently rescued Mrs Batemans cat from the tallest tree in the world - they had to deploy a special ladder, which was the first time this equipment has been used since it was installed last month outside of training. Fire Chief Cecil Burns (37) told TV news that he was happy with how the new equipment performed andd reassured viewers that if they are ever stuck at the top of a really tall burning building they won't have to worry.. [finishing shot zooming out slowly of Mrs B smiling at the camera stroking her pussy]

wtf?? one tiny "happy news story" does not make up for 50 minutes of DOOM GLOOM DEPRESSION etc.

Local news here (UK) seems to be on the rare times I watch any of it "some kids vandalised the youth centre" - "Local supermarket gives old Lady free lifetime supply of hairnets after she slips over on a grape" - "Frank Goodman - your local councillor training to run marathon in aid of 'Single Lesbian Disadvantaged Parents Rainbow Support Group'" "and here is a really really big pumpkin"

I don't even open local papers - they come through my door and get put straight into the recycling bin.

I get all the news I can handle from the bbc website - I find I can skim the headlines and read more abut anything I'm interested in and then surf around a little for other viewpoints from other sites on the same thing if I want - they list UK local World news - sports news - Science news - the weather everything I might want to find out about is within a few mouseclicks on a webpage somewhere.

If I want to get more real gritty detail on a big story I google "<news story> +blog" - boom in half a second I have pages of reading material I can pick and choose from.

Blogs like "Baghdad Burning" I find really put into perspective stuff you read on the news about Iraq - you can find similar perspective enhancing stuff on any news item in no time at all with a couple of deft mouseclicks.

I think that news is evolving - and once the present generation grow up kids who don't remember life without an internet just won't read newspapers.

Hopefully news will one day actually be "the news" i.e. here is a summary of all the good and bad things that happened today - and not just here is all the headline grabbing [censored] that our market research tells us that you comsumers like to watch before we [cut to commercials].

If that ever happens I might start watching again [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[nyc999]

I consider myself a news junkie but never watch local news. At most, I feel like they cover maybe 4-5 newsworthy stories in a half hour. Most nights, they cover 1-2 good stories then have fluff pieces, "exclusive" stories very few people care about, or investigative work that is usually uninteresting.

I do subscribe to the NY Times - although this has little to do with keeping up with local news. I moved outside of NYC last year and haven't read a local paper since I moved (Northern NJ).

I scan MSNBC, CNN and NY Times online every morning, have about 8-9 news organizations on my Google Reader feed, and also use different websites for business, politics, weather and sports.

My one "local" newsource is 1010 AM - a local news station that covers local, national and international news.

[rory]

I skim the sports section and the local news parts in the local papers when I am having coffee in the morning but that's about it. Most of my news other than that comes from cnn or the wsj on the web or cnn on the tv.

[idrinkcoors]

Our town of 100,000 people has 3 newscasts that are worth watching for the humor aspect alone. Missing graphics, mispronounications, gettting caught on camera combing their hair, etc..

And as far as reading the local papers, I write a weekly column for one, so yeah, I read them.

[Colt McCoy]

David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle recently opined that local newspapers should start charging for online content.

A reader said:

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"Content is no longer worth paying for," he said. "Going forward, it will not be possible to charge for content ... and any industry which relies on trying to make people pay for content will collapse."

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and

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"Why would I ever pay to read a column like yours when I could just as easily read someone's blog?" Moran asked. "Your writing is no better, your content is no more original, than the content produced for free every day by amateurs."

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Lazarus' response was that professional journalists will get access and do more work and do real research that bloggers or other online sources aren't willing or able to do.

More feedback:

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"Most people working in news media right now are basically superfluous," he added. "They're overpaid and have an inflated sense of self-worth."

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Thoughts??

[nyc999]

[ QUOTE ]
David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle recently opined that local newspapers should start charging for online content.

[/ QUOTE ]

The New York Times recently moved to in this direction. They have a subscription-based service called Times Select. It's only a small percentage of their overall content, but contains the editorials and top journalists.

I don't think it's a terrible idea for opinion-based and non-news content (e.g. travel stories, etc.).

[guids]

My thoughts? It doesnt suprise me that someone from San Fransisco can not distinguish the difference between the act of fact reporting (like newspapers should), and a blog (which is heavily biased) normally.

[imthaifool]

Why do people ever pay for newspaper subscriptions when they can read it free on the internet?