P2: Comparison of News Sources

When reading through my classmates blogs, I noticed that we receive our news from unsurprisingly similar sources. A few mention watching TV and reading the newspaper but the majority cite the Internet as the main outlet for news. I think that we have reached a conclusion in class that technology cannot be classified as entirely good or bad, therefore using the Internet for news has its pros and cons. There can, of course, be false information and hoaxes on the Internet but with reputable resources like The New York Times, BBC, and CNN there can also be a huge amount of viable information.

I must confess that it's been a very long time since I picked up a newspaper and read it but I have been keeping up with nytimes.com and have enjoyed reading and exploring the variety of topics available. I really like the Travel and Arts sections because they often choose topics that I've never heard of or destinations that would seem less than exotic, but are actually quit interesting.

I was reminded by one of the posts about watching the news with my parents after dinner and realized that my habit of watching the nightly news has largely disappeared. I recently got a small TV in my room and hope that perhaps I can take up this habit again. I realized that watching the news usually came with more opinion but also sparked a bit more conversation and critical thinking on my part as well.

I think that our class' web habits are on par with the rest of the United States, if not a bit more academic, and that it shows that our generation is adapting to new ways of gathering information. I think that as long as you take certain sources with a grain of salt, that it's reasonable to have the Internet as your main news source. I think that above all the Internet is a tool which, like all tools, can be used properly and become valuable but can also become a hindrance if used without caution.