At work I am part of a group that is focused on attracting a younger and casual news audience through careful page design and changing the way we present content. There has been a lot of talk on how young people and the casual news reader consume the news. I am certainly a casual news reader so I started thinking about how I consume news.
In a typical day I consume a lot of information. Throughout the day I scan blogs, Twitter feeds and occasionally jump into my RSS reader. This is mostly all design and technology related information and not what you would call traditional news. When it comes to world news I have a single top story widget on my iGoogle page from MSNBC and if a headline catches my eye I’ll check the story out. Every morning I get an email from the News & Observer showing me the top headlines for NC State and the Carolina Hurricanes. If a headline peaks my interest I’ll read the full story and then typically navigate away from the N&O. Sometimes I listen to podcasts throughout the day but the ones I subscribe to rarely contain any news in the traditional sense. While in the car as I travel to and from work I have local sports radio on. This totals to maybe 30 minutes a day but radio is full of commercials so I typically only get 10-15 minutes of real content and opinion. In the evening I religiously watch Pardon the Interruption. I am a big sports fan and the PTI format is great for getting a good mix of the day’s top stories. After PTI is finished I rarely if ever consume any more news for the day.
So lets summarize my typical day. I actively find specialized content that really interests me (design & tech news). I let information that I’m casually interested in become the background noise of my day (sports). I ignore everything else because I believe that if an item of news is truly important it will find me.
So now I pose the question to you… what is your typical day when it comes to information consumption? If you have a free minute write a comment below describing your typical day when it comes to news and information. Try to touch on the kind of content you encounter and the medium you use to engage with it. If the content is delivered to you then how? Would you consider yourself a light news reader or a news junkie? I’m hoping that responses will help me paint a better picture of how people consume news and this will hopefully lead me to better design.
Great post! Super relevant considering our industry. Like you, my day consists of finding news relative to specific interests ranging from clothes to technology & gadgets to music to sports & poker. Some days, I’ll check out CNN.com for big headlines and if I hear people talking about a local event I’ll check out the N&O or WRAL. Other than that, most important topics find me (as you say) through twitter, facebook and casual conversations. If there was a great iPhone app for reading news that wasn’t buggy and was easy-to-read, I’d definitely look at that on a daily basis though!
My news gathering isn’t much different actually.
I scan my tweets looking for things with interesting links. I key on industry related topics (web development and photography), weird news, and Carolina Hurricanes news, but occasionally other breaking news or other sports news will catch me.
I keep track of the weather with various widgets and my eyes and if needed, I’ll pop to WRAL for radar and watch/warning information.
I have a newsreader setup with various news sources: CNN, N&O, WRAL, Miami Herald and Lexington Herald Leader. I pretty much just scan those headlines and rarely will click on something. CNN gets more clicks than the rest, though Miami comes up with weird stories. But usually someone else has already tweeted it. I don’t subscribe to any news paper feed in twitter, btw.
I have several hockey and sports news RSS feeds, but they also get a causal scan. The geek feeds (Slashdot, Ars Technia, Wired, Macworld, etc.) get more attention.
My wife likes to watch CNN when we get home, so a dose of Wolf Blitzer and the bozo who comes on after him (glad Lou Dobbs is on vacation, his stand in has much less hate). She will flip over to NBC-17 to catch the late news cast though I think we would prefer to watch WRAL, but its timing. She also likes NBC Nightly news which is probably why we end up on NBC-17’s 7:00er.
Occasionally at lunch, I’ll read the print N&O picking up on a couple of local stories, usually sports, but I scan all the section fronts before picking which two stories to read.
Now I’m older than the target your looking for, but I’m not your traditional person either.
My name is phil and I am a news junkie. I’ve been clean for a little less than a year. Before that I was all up in the news 24/7. Then I decided to focus on something else.
Now I usually listen to a local newscast on my 20 minute commute in each morning, try to catch the last 30 minutes of Special Report with Bret Baier on Fox News after dinner and that’s about it. I check the standings for the American League East to make sure the Red Sox are still in first place about once a week.
The other place I pick up news tidbits is in my twitter feed.