Notes on how we relate to and consume the news
The inspiration for this post was a book called "News: A user's manual" by Alain De Botton. Alain De Botton takes the approach that we need to change how we emotionally relate to news stories and how those in charge of the news, the editors, writers and so on, all have a role to play in making everyday news stories something that still informs us of the wider world beyond our surroundings while keeping our sanity in tact. Some key examples are how newspapers and news websites typically write about the economic changes in a company's value on the stock market, perhaps due to the development or deployment of an innovative technology, these changes are communicated in brief numerical figures. Apple stock up ^+0.81 vs Nvidia stock down v-0.11. Versus instead writing a first hand account of an assembly worker taking on an extra shift as he's expecting his wife to give birth any day and the development of a new technology gives him the opportunity he needs to cover the related hospital expenses regarding his child's birth. Or rephrasing a story around a tragic car crash into one about the grief and everyday possibility of tragedy one has to solemnly embrace in order to live a normal life in this world. He goes on to give historical examples of when public stories of heroism and tragedy were explicitly designed to encouage mass scale reflections on virtue and the fragility of life as a type of cultural technology to reinforce norms that would (in theory) enable us to live happier, healthier, more fulfilling lives. A key example focused on is that of the Greeks and how they would use myths to remind us that life is chaotic and unpredictable even with the best of preparations and how the focus on virtue won't save us but instead help us better weather the storms of life. Alain De Botton envisions a similar purpose for the news we consume.
I think this vision is nice but too idealistic to work, take a story about the assembly worker getting more money to cover birth related expenses and you mandate both a left wing and right wing newspaper to cover this story. If your only rule was "make sure your writing conveys a message about the importance of X virtue", that one rule can give wildly different accounts, conclusions and messages. The right wing news organization could turn that story into one emphasizing the importance of hard work and diligence while the left wing one covers that same story as a tragedy decrying the inherent exploitation in requiring said assembly worker to envision the best use of his compensation is to cover medical expenses when if he were in a country with universal health care, he would make better use of that money like starting a union and so on.
I came away from the book disappointed, not in it's vision but moreso because I approached the book with the wrong attitude. I presumed the book would dive deeper into the stylistic technology of the news, why and when they incorporated more photos into online articles, why they never update or even keep active RSS feeds, how the advent of click through advertisements has the majority of news websites a slog to even click through.
In my ideal world where I can change reality with a snap of my fingers, I would mandate that all news websites must maintain an active RSS/Atom feed with subfeeds dedicated to different categories or journalists. For example, imagine you can subscribe solely to the Sports section and a few columnists from the New York Times, this would cut down on the articles you have to skip through and streamline your reading into what you're really interested in. Ars Technica already has this implementation for free and I want more news websites to use it as well. Another stylistic change I would enforce with an iron fist would be to make text only versions of their websites a permanent option, for those who don't know NPR offers a text only version of their website which can be found at https://text.npr.org . Click on that link and compare it with the regular https://npr.org and the difference in experience is night and day. Far less clutter on the text only version leading to what I feel would be greater focus and less sensationalism and advertisements cluttering up the experience.