A guest post from my brother, Trevor, in response to the news consumption survey:

A couple of points in your article.

The first is your use of the word “consumption”. I think it might just be a suitable behind-the-scenes word for news, but I’m not sure if it’s the word “for the public, to the public”. To use an analogy that is closer to the word “consume”, you may consume drugs because you’re an addict, you may consume a Big Mac and fries because you’re hungry, but you wouldn’t “consume” a 500 dollar meal for two at a Michelin-starred restaurant. You’d taste it, you’d enjoy it, and you’d savour it.

Thus also for news. One broad division of “news” might be: things that could make a difference to our lives, private and professional, by knowing them, and things that definitely won’t. Glancing at a paper, it’s clear to me that nearly everything for nearly everyone falls into the second category.

And I mention this to explain the lesser popularity aggregators are facing. The “facts”, the events themselves, are not as important as the “story” or the narrative. We are not interested in purely in events – because they rarely directly matter to us in themselves – but rather in the manner in which they are presented. News aggregators tend to strip this all away. People say they aren’t interested in getting information from sources that reflect their viewpoints, but then they buy The Guardian if they’re leftwing, and The Telegraph if they are to the right. If they are supremely proud of their independent minds, they buy The Independent, which flatters them on that too. All this because the story becomes the entertainment, told in the way the reader likes.

Ok, don’t know if any of this helps, but “consuming” news doesn’t sound at all like something that’s in itself enjoyable. And if a thing is futile, which most “news” is, it had better be fun.

In general I agree, particularly on consumption; news consumption certainly doesn’t sound like much fun. Maybe instead of describing people as news consumers we should describe them as news connoisseurs? On whether readers want news that reflects their views I’m not so sure. US media blogger Steve Boriss notes here that he prefers our lively politically bias press to US newspaper’s dry liberal consensus. However, on the other hand, personalised news services seem to be a one way ticket to the deadpool (see Techcrunch write-up here). I guess we want our news channels to talk to us, but not only to us.

Popularity: 2% [?]