Uses and Gratifications

I use the print media to relax and reduce tension because I love reading the Economist and National Geographic whenever I have a little bit of free time. In terms of other media, I've basically been banned from watching television with my roommates because I always point out the inplausibility of the program whether it is Grey's Anatomy or CSI.

We would like to think that we are not media dependent but in being technological depending we don't realize how much the two are interconnected. While this is only slightly related, I had a minor breakdown when my Google documents weren't loading since my life exists in Google, which I would consider to be part of the media world to some extent.

We have a variety of media outlets available; therefore we would assume that we are less dependent on a single media. However, I realized that I often only visit the same media sites even though I'd like to expose myself to many different opinions and interpretations of the news. I am dependent on certain media Web sites because there is never enough time to read everything I want to.

I also really don't like to read conservative opinions in the news even though I know I should. I always laugh when I get e-mails from David Horowitz, a conservative author and activist, who I interviewed when I was a sophomore. Two years later, I'm still included on mass e-mail lists from the David Horowitz Freedom Center bashing the left and liberal media.

As news editor though I do tend to skim through the Catholic News Service to keep track of Catholic things that we might want to cover for the school newspaper, but I don't enjoy it. I do it because I have to for my job. I don't independently seek out this alternative news source.

The common experiences section of the Sunstein article made me think of the one thing almost everyone in my generation and now many in yours do share: Facebook.

In terms of media consumption, my newsfeed is filled with my conservative and liberal friends posting articles from different media outlets that they're read. Whether I disagree with them/would have sought them out myself/have already it, I still see them and sometimes read them.

People keep telling me journalists will just work online and everything will be fine. Yet while news consumption is actually UP meaning more people are reading more news people are reading it all online. This report from Paid Content shows that readers in the UK who report reading newspaper has also slightly increased while circulation is still down.

While the media has many different definitions, the mainstream media particularly the print medium that I love makes me more depressed with every news story I read particularly this one about the closure of the Chicago Tribune Beijing bureau, which I visited when I was in China last year.