Forum:The news is a waste of time?

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A long while back someone linked me to this blog post: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

It is by Aaron Swartz (R.I.P.), who worked on a bunch of web stuff, including Reddit.

The thing is I used to occasionally read news papers and watch news channels when I was a teen because I thought it was important to stay informed. As I grew busier and busier I stopped trying to keep up with that and I realized that it was not to my detriment. Whether I read the news or not actually has no (or rarely has any) immediate effect on my life. So after reading aforementioned blog post I find myself wondering how much time I ultimately wasted following the news back in the day.

Maybe there was some use to it in the end. I am certainly less shocked now when I hear of the latest headlines from people around me, because I know what the news is like.

Is there any good reason at all for the news to exist, though? Or maybe it has some greater purpose, some essential effect on society?

I would appreciate any thoughts on this. Nullahnung (talk) 12:42, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Gee...Like I don't know...Fucking giving people information? Fancy that!--The Madman (talk) 12:46, 12 August 2013 (UTC)The Madman

Note that this is about 'the news', not news in general like specialist news that you like to follow about your favorite sports team or technology or science. It is always good to keep up to date on the latest developments in the world of gagdets if you're into them, for example. But what about 'the news'? What did you think about the blog post by Aaron Swartz? He explains how the news is a waste of time in much greater detail than I'm doing. Nullahnung (talk) 12:52, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Look up the history of newsprint pre- and post- Gutenberg. You'll be quite surprised about how important it is to maintaining your way of life. (I'd also suggest Tim Wu's The Master Switch.) Osaka Sun (talk) 13:10, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

The news is rarely relevant to your individual situation, but is frequently relevant to the world in general--even when the news is spending half its time on some British nanny's child, that provides insight on the way people work and what they are interested in. Why should you care? Well, you don't have to. But if you make other people your business, then suddenly almost all news is relevant. For example, my goal in life is to improve the world, through whatever means. Because of this, almost anything is relevant to me, and therefore the news is interesting. Kimberly (talk) 13:13, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I used to read the quality daily and Sunday newspapers quite a bit, and at one time The Economist, but now rarely bother with them other than the BBC headlines as I find it is usually better to be informed well after the event when there is some clarity. Things are also different now in that there are 24-hour news feeds and different media oulets are competing for attention so a lot of stuff is sensationalist or celeb-culture. There is so much that I need to cram into my life that I have largely forsaken a lot of the fluff as being too time-consuming. Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 11:48, 16 August 2013 (UTC)