A question of balance

I like to flip through newspapers.

Sure, most of the news that I read is online and I always seem to have a lot of tabs open on my browser to various news sources and aggregators. Still, I have multiple papers delivered to the doorstep each morning.

On line, I read stories that have headlines that catch my eye. at the breakfast table, I try to scan almost everything. A lot of the stories are old news – frequently, I find I have already read preliminary versions of the print articles in my online scanning the day before. But I also find there are important articles that didn’t grab my attention online.

Different papers cover different angles and present very different observations to their readers. I find that I benefit from diverse view points and I enjoy reading the tidbits of news and opinion that wouldn’t merit a click online. That is the difference between reading an article on Wikipedia and glancing at adjacent articles in a printed encyclopedia.

I wonder how “digital natives” – the kids who aren’t bothering to subscribe to any papers, let alone multiple dailies – are getting the benefit of random exposure to information. Frequently, I sense that while the internet makes so much information available, we tend to pull down articles that agree with opinions we already have.

At the same time, when I read an article that is clearly slanted in its perspective, I am grateful for the opportunity to scan the web, seeking balance.

Contrast a headline that reads: “Government Caves to Lobbying Pressure on Anti-Spam Legislation“. Contrast that view with Barry Sookman’s series of articles “Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: why they are needed“, and “Evaluating the Industry Canada CASL regulations: how to assess them” or this article or this one.

It is a question of balance.