I want to elaborate on a thought that I had in class the other day about our generation having short attention spans and the effect that is going to have on the kind of journalism we consume. It is no secret that many prefer to watch the news on television rather than read it in a paper. Why is that? Well, when you are watching television, you can be audibly consuming the news while, say, chatting with a friend online, making dinner, even doing homework. When reading a newspaper, these tasks are harder to do (although not impossible).
As I know many other people my age do, I often find myself multi-tasking for no good reason. Chatting online with a friend, watching a video on Youtube, reading a news article online — these are activities that I can usually do all at once. Now how is a 1,000 word news article supposed to compete with that?
For myself, if something can't engage me immediately, I won't waste my time reading or viewing it. I get most of my news from Twitter, where a constant feed of headlines from The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, CNN, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, and other local media outlets such as WMUR and The Portsmouth Herald give me up-to-date news. Sometimes it is enough for me to read the tweet and nothing else. I get the information I need, and decide that I probably won't benefit from any more. Other times, I'll click on the link, read the first few paragraphs of the article, and then move on. Rarely do I get through an entire news story in one piece, and I'm a journalism major. What does that say about the average person who doesn't have an intense dedication to news and staying informed? Would they even click on the link in the first place? Would they even seek out news.
The problem with these times is that there is such a fight to get an individual's attention, an attention that can only be held for so many hours of the day. We are bombarded, every day, with possible distractions: TV, social media, videos online, games, music, etc. that to get someone to pick up a newspaper, flip through it and read every single story is just not a realistic goal. As much as I don't like it, newspapers will not remain a central way to consume media, especially with my generation. News outlets must think of new ways to attract readers, or else they will lose them.
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