By Edward Nawotka, Editor-in-Chief
For the past several years The Atlantic has been surveying media personalities about their daily media consumption. It’s a fascinating series, one that’s likely to lead you to some unexpected sources. Of course, you see some themes emerge: starting the day with Twitter and ending it with a book.
For example:
Author and media personality Reza Aslan admits that he gets most of his news from Twitter and the Council on Foreign Relations website, has whittled his magazine consumption down to just The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, and reserves time at night for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and reading the latest book in the Game of Thrones series.
Y.A. novelist Maureen Johnson, whose latest book The Madness Underneath is devoted to, you guessed it, Twitter, but also reads web sites — BoingBoing, Gawker, Jezebel, and LifeHacker — as well as listens to podcast such as The Bugle, Stuff You Should Know, Judge John Hodgman, The History Chicks, and Superego. She too likes to end her day with a book. One assumes its a print book, since she’s got a wise “no screens in the bedroom” rule.
Editor and writer Ben Greenman too relies on Twitter, which he describes as an “echo chamber,” but focuses his news consumption on Google News. And he still tries “like hell to read normal books, since,” he says, “I am at least partly in the business of creating them.” And he says something that particularly struck me as a media producer myself: “These days, so much of media is about discharging static electricity: getting rid of the energy that I don’t want so that I can get on with my business.”
Me, I’m still a big fan of RSS feeds, which after the death of Google News, I’ve brought down to a manageable level or 1oo or so, which I read using Protopage. My mornings, which are devoted to getting a child off to school, are for radio: NPR or Monocle 24 via streaming. For long drives, I find Elvis Mitchell’s “The Treatment” and “The Moth Radio Hour” podcasts essential to making the miles go by faster. My magazine addiction has become much less a burden to the mailman now that Next Issue exists. And, like the rest of television viewing America, I’m well aware that there are just five episodes of Breaking Bad left to air. Then what…? Well, the second season of “The Newsroom” is showing improvement. For one thing, the show makes me feel like the work of the media still has a role to play in civilizing civilization, even if it is just fiction.
So tell us, what’s you’re daily media diet look like. What are your must reads and daily drivers? Who are you fanatical about following? Do podcasts still have a place in your life? Television? Radio?
And please do confirm you still finish the day with a book. You do, don’t you?