What’s your media diet?
Mar 13, 2010 in Media
One of my favourite things on the Atlantic’s exhausting blogs is the Media Diet column. The magazine asks some of their favourite writers what papers, blogs, magazines, etc. they read.
There are a lot of writers here I admire, Susan Orlean admits to being a newspaper, magazine and NPR junkie and apparently can’t go anywhere without her iPhone.
Sports/economics writer Michael Lewis apparently doesn’t like Twitter but really likes ESPN.
Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates really likes his blogs, which isn’t surprising because it’s what he does for a living.
And seeing how the Atlantic isn’t going to ask me what my media diet is anytime soon I’ll just have to tell you.
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I usually start my day on the subway, so it’s usually a podcast that’s on: This American Life, Radiolab and the BBC’s amazing History of the World in 100 Objects are currently on heavy rotation. When I get above ground I do a quick check of various news sites and my twitter feed to get a 15-20 jump on the news.
When I get to work I scan the National Post in print to look for anything that deserves better play on our website. Then I scan our competition, the Globe, the Star and the CBC, again to see if we overlooked anything. I’ll hit the New York Times, CNN and the BBC to get the pulse on world news.
I’ll admit news aggregators have made my job a lot easier: Newser, the Daily Beast and Huffington Post are some of the ones I check out a few times a day. When I want to procrastinate, so basically three or four times a day, I try to make a dent in my Google Reader. Sisyphean does not even begin to describe that task. If you’re interested, some of the things that catch my eye are highlighted on the right. For more frenetic procrastination, I check my twitter feed, which has an obscene number of media sources on it.
I do actually still like print products (books and magazines in particular) and I do look forward to the day my issue of the New Yorker, Esquire and the Walrus arrive. And my apartment is full of books, there’s usually about 3-4 on the go at any time, you can see what I’m reading on the right hand side as well.
If you’re wondering how I get anything else other than reading done during the day? I wonder that myself.