flâneur

I Hate the News (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought)

aaronsw.com · 6,132 words · saved by 2 readers

Some people start their day by reading The New York Times. Others end it by watching the nightly news. Some get it from The Daily Show. Others download it from a variety weblogs. Some keep up-to-the-minute by following CNN. Others have instant news updates automatically text messaged to their phone. But everybody seems to agree: it’s a citizen’s responsibility to keep up with the news. Everybody except me. I think following the news is a waste of time. Some people agree with me on a small scale. Some point out that the cable channels are obsessed with bizarre crimes that have little larger impact, that they worry too much about horse-race coverage of politics, that too much of the news is filled with PR-inserted nonsense. But they do this because they think these are aberrations; that underneath all this, the news is worth saving. I simply go one step further: I think none of it is worthwhile. Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times, the gold standard in news. In the to

I Hate the News (Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought) Raw Thought by Aaron Swartz I Hate the News Some people start their day by reading The New York Times . Others end it by watching the nightly news. Some get it from The Daily Show . Others download it from a variety weblogs. Some keep up-to-the-minute by following CNN. Others have instant news updates automatically text messaged to their phone. But everybody seems to agree: it’s a citizen’s responsibility to keep up with the news. Everybody except me. I think following the news is a waste of time. Some people agree with me on a small sca

saved by

related reading