News consumption is all the rage these days. With the Advent of the smartphone you literally can’t walk down any city street and not see people with their heads buried in their phone consuming news. This begs the question of what is the best free internet news source that you should be following to make sure you’re receiving unbiased information in a timely fashion.
There is extensive debate around what is actually considered news and the recent phenomenon of fake news. Attritional Publications shifting their orientation more and more towards digital outlets, it has become easier to publish information to a mass audience Then it ever has been in the past.
We have seen similar revolutions in information dissemination before, such as the invention of the printing press, the invention of radio, and the introduction of television in the 1950s. The internet was another such invention in the 1990s which has dramatically changed how the news business is run and will influence your thinking on the best sources to consume news today.
In the early days it was still, to charge people to get their news even if it was delivered via an internet-based service. But the business models have shifted dramatically towards advertising driven news sources and some of the best sources of internet information have shifted entirely to ad based models.
There’s great debate on whether an advertising driven model is good or bad for internet use production. Many people love the idea they can find free sources for news on the internet and say that they disregard the advertisements entirely. However experts have run tracking studies and follow their eye movements and report that they actually do pay attention to ads.
Other surprising Studies have found that contextual ads that are well-formed around the content in additional medium are actually viewed by consumers as positive. Readers of these new sources find those advertisements to be helpful because they are so related to the topic they are interested in.
Say for example you are reading a story about running. This is because you’re interested in the latest news in this work and running the passion of yours. You’re on the internet because you have some time to kill and do you want to learn about your hobby. When that digital newsource shows you an advertisement related to running shoes, it is very likely that you will see that as helpful. Running was already on your mind and you may be in the market for new shoes. Even if you are not shopping for new shoes you were likely to want to know the latest models and newest Innovations in the sport and you will not find these advertisements to be intrusive.
Others have argued that the advertisement model is horrible for internet news sources. They believe it bends the content to be more focused towards Commerce and takes away journalistic integrity and complete Independence. in traditional publishing models the advertising side of a newspaper was completely separated from the journalistic side. This worked well for many many years has it ensured Integrity through a separation of powers. This model was sometimes called the church and state model of journalism.
Over the last several years we’ve seen these walls crumble and many journalists are not happy about it. They see the advertising and business pressures as changing the way internet news sources publish events, and not in a positive way.
What are your daily news habits like? With all these competing forces we have devices that are not with us 24/7, combined with publishers who have a keen interest in advertising to you as often as possible.
One of the results of this change it news consumption is that people are consuming sound bites and are less interested in long form journalistic content. One exception we see to this is the podcast movement, which generally tends to move slower and present topics much more in-depth.
Even in the podcast world, there is debate around using advertising models or pay walls.
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