Remember when we watched the evening news at 6 or 11? Any other time, you couldn’t see it. Sept. 11, 2001 happened and now we have news 24/7.
I now like the old way better - all the bad news of 2020 has changed my mind.
Remember when we watched the evening news at 6 or 11? Any other time, you couldn’t see it. Sept. 11, 2001 happened and now we have news 24/7.
I now like the old way better - all the bad news of 2020 has changed my mind.
CNN first went on the air 24/7 in 1980, which seems incredible now. I was pretty young at the time, but I remember how bizarre 24 hour news seemed to the adults I knew then. Continuous news seemed pointless - how could anyone fill all 24 hours of the day with news? Some accused the channel early on of stretching stories out to fill space, but now it seems like 24 hours isn't nearly enough time to get everything in, because the definition of "news" has expanded to fit the 24-hour medium. Now someone's "wardrobe malfunction" counts as news, as does just about anything else that courts attention. Social media hasn't improved the situation as a 24/7 "personal news" medium. I only vaguely remember the time before everything and everyone was just a button push away. It was a long time ago now.
I was a news junkie from a young age. I began reading the local paper in first or second grade. We got cable in 1982. I loved news all the time! I later got a journalism degree and was a newspaper reporter in northern Michigan in the early 90s.
I also think choosing one paper over another was also a way, at the time, for people to signal to others which 'tribe' they were part of. Certainly someone looking at a bunch of people on a train reading various papers would have a different opinion about someone reading the NY Post versus someone reading the Wall Street Journal. And who knows, perhaps the reader of the Wall Street Journal would have recognized a difference between himself and someone reading Barron's. (I have no idea why but my father had a strong preference for Barrons when it came to investment information. Every sunday morning he went out to a newsstand in denver and bought it religiously. However, judging from his longterm investing success perhaps he was on to something.) Certainly not as individualized as the curated online presence one can create today, but still notable to other people seeing them.
You want to talk old? I used to listen to the news on shortwave radio.
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