Walking down our street yesterday, I was thinking about how only one person for at least several blocks gets the newspaper delivered. We all get different news in our own bubbles. I love the web and the freedom of publishing, but we have lost something to no longer have a shared set of facts.
@manton There's a family aspect of the newspaper I think about, reading the comics as a kid with my dad, getting interested in local and world affairs.
@manton I enjoyed getting the physical paper when I lived in Austin until the Statesman just could not get holds correct. I'd leave and come home to 7 papers on the doorstep or come home to no papers, but then delivery wouldn't restart. Incorrect 4 times out of 5 one way or the other. I gave up. Read it online for a while, but it wasn't the same as spreading it on the table with my coffee and breakfast.
@manton Well, "facts" maybe, but highly curated to omit facts that smaller portions of the population are interested in, or presented in a way that doesn't necessarily reflect the true nature of some portions of the population. Now we can seek out facts from additional sources.
@Miraz That is the other side of it, for sure, and I don't want to go back to a single source for news. I do think many people are lost in a news rabbit hole that doesn't resemble the real world, though.
@manton Shared set of facts? I used to deliver newspapers 20 years ago. Streets would be full of different newspapers that each prioritised alternate sets of facts. As a kid, nothing teaches you about the political leanings of different media like looking at 5 different front page headlines.
@manton I think the medium is relevant. Whilst I appreciate how attractive the word "fact" is for debating when presented online, it's important to remember the distinct difference of analogue news to the digital counterpart: that paper publication does not care about your browser, preferences, settings, cache, cookies, location, or roaming habits... mostly because it can't, obviously.
There is great strength in forcing people to reckon with the undeniable and immovable nature of information presented in analogue form. Sure, the dynamic nature of online news is much better for certain people but I think as with many aspects of the web we have over-corrected in favour of those people and thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
@SimonWoods @manton Good summary. Also as someone said, different papers were of opposing opinions; but the facts were mostly the same. It didn’t hurt to get a overview of who the papers were owned by, and whose political views they reflected, but things, (the truth), weren’t so up in the air as it is now. 😔📰
@manton I have gotten the local newspaper for 25+ years. Two years ago I switched to the digital subscription when I realized that 6 months of lower cost could pay for a nice iPad, which I use to read the local paper every morning.
@odd One of my favourite comedians, David Mitchell, hit the nail on the head:
Essentially, you can't tell truth from lies; they both look perfectly nicely typeset, they're both on websites.
From his appearance on The Graham Norton Show.
@SimonWoods True! Sadly, I don’t have access to the excellent Graham Norton Show anymore. (cable cutter)
@ndw single greatest use of my pre-M1 iPad Pro is reading the NYT and WSJ with my coffee in the morning. Of all the other computationally more demanding things I do on it, they pale compared to just sitting and reading the news. My university provides both for faculty and students, but if I had to buy my own subscription, I’d get the local paper or the LA Times. (I do pay for the Athletic. It’s fantastic.)
