Where I Get My News - 2012

Growing up my parents were news junkies. As a result, I sort of pride myself on knowing what’s going on in the world. The other day I was asked where I get my news and it took me a while to answer the question. So I thought I’d think about it and lay out the answer in a blog post. I’ll try to order these sources from most consumption to least consumption. Here goes. Blogs. Currently I follow 52 blogs and I read them daily. The topics include business, technology, sports, current events and healthcare. Most of the blogs are written by individuals, but I do follow the What’s News section of the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker and Techmeme which aggregate posts from a wide variety of writers and sources. I use Google Reader to manage the blog feeds on my desktop and the Reeder App to view them on my iPhone and iPad.

Twitter. I follow about 200 people on Twitter. I get a ton of news from individual Tweets as well as links to other content that I’m interested in that gets Tweeted. I follow a variety of news outlets, bloggers, traditional writers, businesspeople, athletes and musicians.

Podcasts. I follow 14 podcasts. My most listened to podcasts in order are a variety of shows on WEEI (Boston’s sports radio station), the Adam Carolla Show, This American Life (NPR) and the B.S. Report (Bill Simmons).

Television. I watch far less TV than I used to. I watch Meet the Press and 60 Minutes every week without fail. And I sporadically and somewhat infrequently catch parts of the local broadcast news and national cable news.

Newspapers. Because I'm from Boston I read the online version of the Boston Globe virtually every single day. Living in New York, on a rare, rare occasion I will pick up a copy of the Times, the Post or the Daily News.

Magazines. I subscribe to hard copies of Men’s Health and Outside Magazine. With some regularity I’ll download the New Yorker, the Atlantic or the Economist onto my iPad.

Other Social Media. Occasionally I’ll find a link to an article posted by a friend or connection on Facebook or LinkedIn.

Kindle. I got my first Kindle back in March. I love it. But so far I haven’t used it for anything other than reading books, though I plan to use it to read newspapers and magazines when I get around to it. Currently I’m reading Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote. Both are great.

So there’s my somewhat organized list of where I get my news. It’ll be interesting to see how this changes over the next few years.