It's News to Me...

Blog Assignment 2

It's hard to find credible sources of information these days. The unabashed bias of major media companies is impossible to ignore. Any average joe can start a blog and call it 'news' (I mean, I'm doing it). So, like many Americans, I get my world updates from entertaining sources with biases I can trust.

1. Current TV.
If you have digital cable or satellite, venture up into the 100's and you'll see a brilliant, progressive channel called Current, whose major objective is to bring news to the people, from the people (albeit people under 30, in most cases). It's like YouTube without all the crap! The people at Current will accept viewer-created videos on major news or human interest pieces and put them on their website for review. The most popular stories make it on TV. I love this station because the videos are usually under 10 minutes each, with very few commercials (many of which are also viewer-created). You'd be surprised what people our age find important, and at how much you can learn sitting on your couch for an hour. Go to Current.com to check it out!

2. The Daily Show/Colbert Report
I started watching The Daily Show in 7th grade when Bush's failures as a politician got bad enough for a 12-year-old to understand. I kept watching because the material got better and better as the administration worsened. And if I was going to hear biased news (because there's really no other kind at this point) I wanted to hear MY bias, and I wanted it to be funny. Of course, over time I formed a place in my heart for then-Daily Show correspondent Stephen Colbert's pseudo-conservative satire. Once he got a spinoff show, I gladly dedicated an hour of each night to Comedy Central. Obama lovers, don't dispair. I, too, was nervous they'd start poking fun at our leader now that Bush is out of office. As it turns out, there's still quite a bit of left-wing material.

3. Twitter
With Facebook's versatility and universal popularity, it might seem kind of lame to join yet another social network dedicated to one-line blurbs that are, essentially, Facebook statuses. When I made my account, it seemed a bit useless because no one I knew had one. But I started checking it almost hourly when I realized I could follow major credible media like the New York Times. With Twitter I can get immediate one-line updates with links from my favorite news sources, companies, and even famous people. It's like if your Facebook News Feed showed updates from all your favorite websites! Once you start making Tweets, it's hard to stop.

4. And of course, blogs! (but only the trustworthy ones, like Perezhilton.com!!)