Alrighty, so it’s officially Day 4 of reading a physical newspaper (did you know they used to call them “fish wraps” so… yeah).
We are back again reading The Australian newspaper. If you didn’t catch yesterday’s post, I have spaced out just the one paper for the last few days of this test. I noticed pretty early on that it takes time and effort to read through the entirety of a newspaper – particularly when you are interested in almost all the articles. So I have split it up.
Today, I really appreciated reading an article pushing back on journalistic standards. Another journalist pointed out a particular writer who seemingly tends to leave out information on a story that doesn’t fit her narrative, rather than just share all the information. On the whole, I think journalists have forgotten that newspaper articles are NOT opinion, they are information providers. You want to write an opinion piece, start a blog. It’s not the same.
I was impressed again by the level of professionalism and quality – and made it to the “world” section, which appears to have pulled articles (or at the very least, ideas) from other papers around the world that the article relates to.
So, where do I sit on the Slob to Snob scale today? I feel like I am going steady at an ‘Enlightened and Surprised Human‘ – a marked improvement!
I’m still going, and there are a few more days left of this series, so check back tomorrow to see if my opinion goes downhill, I start feeling dumber, or maybe it just gets better?
Okay, it is DAY 2 of reading a physical newspaper to see if it can make me smarter and a little more educated.
After the challenge yesterday of finding a place where you can find an array of paper choices, I settled to run up to Wooly’s and grabbed a different one than yesterday. Today’s choice, was The Herald Sun!
So, what are my thoughts overall, and in comparison to the one I read yesterday? Let me tell you – good and bad (again, lacking in consistency), here we go!
Good
There are helpful things (that were also in yesterday’s paper choice too) that if you don’t like using your phone or computer would be great! Like the weather and tv guide
A fun daily short story surprised me towards the back of the paper
Bad
The layout was just plain confusing! Things were all over the place, and made no sense to be on the same page, let alone next to each other. The best example I came across was an article on Tiktok birth control advice right beside one about the Australian Army…
There were short, meaningless stories that weren’t fleshed out but had POTENTIAL to go into interesting stories and places.. instead they read like a Twitter post of random and short information
The paper was TWICE as long as the other I had read
There were WAY more death and funeral notices in this one, which isn’t bad per se, but it is super depressing to see that many
Again, it was clear which side of the political isle that some of these articles were taking
I will admit, that this time I did NOT read every single article in full. I couldn’t bare it after yesterday when I discovered that newspapers were essentially boring…. yeah. They are.
So, from Uncultured Slob to Pretentious Snob, where do I find myself today?
I think I’m sitting at Frustrated Human
I WILL be subjecting myself to more of this tomorrow, where I will read Another newspaper to see if it gets any better. Meanwhile
Okay, so I decided to run an experiment. With the digital age of news, the actual physical copies of newspapers have become less popular. I don’t actually read news most of the time (at all) because it tends to mostly focus on the horrible things in life, and not much of the beauty we can experience.
BUT, here we are – and I’m testing out what it would be like to read a newspaper every morning…
So, here is what I experienced after DAY 1:
It is WAY harder to find a newspaper these days than you would think! After searching high and low (and by that I mean three places) I finally found the edition I wanted – The Age. It was the most “intellectual” paper that I could think of, so it was the one I wanted to start with.
Once I actually had the paper, it was time to read. Let me tell you – it takes a long time! To read this paper cover to cover (admittedly skimming the sports section) took me 2 HOURS… which for me, is a long time. I don’t know the average it is suppose to take, but to read this type of content for that long was very, very draining.
There were some good and bad things about this edition of The Age Newspaper, so let’s kick it off with the good:
I was surprised that the content was not the “doom and gloom” crime reporting that we tend to see in television news formats. It was much more general news and information, which I rather appreciated.
Very few articles were actually written in a pretentious or overly scholarly way – which made it rather easy to read for the average person
Okay, I know that was only a list of two, and that’s why I got it out of the way early because let me be real with you guys…. There were WAY more bad points to reading this physical paper:
It was annoying and awkward to try and hold this paper. Pages aren’t really connected and you have to fold and unfold constantly… plus my arms hurt from trying to hold it out properly when the article spanned over multiple pages
It took me a long time to get through all the content, some of which was uninteresting and not very exciting to read (and I didn’t skip any of the main articles or content)
It was EVIDENT in several articles where the writer stood on those issues. What side they were on, where journalism is supposed to be an impartial presentation of the facts of a story – equally balanced on both sides of the event. That didn’t always happen
My fingers got black ink all over them
There were a few VERY political and opinion piece that basically slammed a certain group of people if they disagreed with this persons view. Not presenting both sides of a situation or debate does a disservice to those you are writing to, and this writer happened to basically call out those who disagree with him a sexist, racist bigot who is cruel on purpose….. absolutely inexcusable if you ask me
So, overall what are my thoughts on reading the newspaper today… I was bored and uninspired. I don’t think I recall any of the stories and the only memories I do have was that they talked a lot about tennis, some about the royals and indigenous current events, and people who wrote in all had opinions on previous stories…
Catch me again tomorrow as I read a DIFFERENT paper, and see if it can squeeze out some more interesting content.
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