Unit 2 - Blog Post 3 .. My experiences with the Times

Reading the news can be described in one word: interesting. It’s a weird feeling suddenly realizing and knowing or being actually aware of the events and forces that happen around you. It has also been different from the news I am used to reading through Yahoo. News at Yahoo is made to be interesting. They do post important topics up there, but one can notice that they prefer to put up relevant articles that are interesting. The New York Times on the other hand seems to have information before entertainment and this has made it a very interesting read, even with lack of the entertainment I’m used to. I’ve noticed stories that made the headlines. You can almost call me irritated at the amount of news available and neatly classified. It is frustrating to know that even if I spend a two or three hours reading, I can still be uninformed about something. So, I just take it easy on myself and read the headlines just because it is deemed as the most relevant and important information by the editors. Today, the news I read were all in the headlines – ‘Small Business Faces Sharp Rise in Costs of Health Care’, ‘Obama Declares Swine Flu a National Emergency’, and ‘Pakistani Army Captures Taliban Stronghold’ are some of the articles I read today. I may have missed many other important stories that I should probably know about and I accept that just because I know that to function as an individual in society (or to finish my homework), one cannot simply sit at home and read news forever. Reading the New York Times this past week has definitely influenced the other things I do. For example, I’ve noticed that I’m a lot more open to reading (actual reading and not skimming) after I accepted that I needed to have the patience to read the Times every day, at least for class. I’ve also been a bit more open to doing work for my coursework that I was before.