Every day I woke up to the LA Times on the kitchen table, on weekdays left behind after my father had gone to work and on weekends it was spread across the table as he was still there reading it. When we traveled, usually by car, the radio was on usually on a news channel and I became acquainted with the names of various freeway intersections from the LA traffic reports. I don’t remember watching the evening news on TV unless something special was going on. That was our daily news diet: newspapers in the mornings, radio when on family trips and occasionally evening TV news on special occasions. You might have noticed that I didn’t mention whether I read the newspaper or listened to the radio or TV, because I didn’t. Well, the one except was fighting over the comics section with my siblings on the weekends, but other than that, I was not a newspaper reader.

When I went off to college and later began my adult life, I never got up early enough in the morning to be able to spend time leisurely enjoying the local paper. And it amazed me when I encountered families who turned on the TV to watch the morning news. Yeah, I definitely never had time for that. In the years when I was working for the phone company, driving from office to office, I became a fan of talk radio, KABC, with interview programs by Michael Jackson (not the pop star). When I switched to teaching I was not nearly behind the wheel as much and preferred listening to music when I was driving (or needed something in the background while working). Many years later, when podcasting came on the scene, that’s where I got my news. My point is, sitting down, reading something, I’ve never had time for that. Even when everything went digital and I could go to a website or open an app on my tablet, the habit just never stuck. Am I alone in this failure to become a newspaper reader?

This is not to say that I ignore the news, not at all. My morning routine is to open my podcast player, Downcast, open my daily audio playlist and listen to “Shortwave” from NPR, “The Daily” from the New York Times, “IndyMatters” from the Nevada Independent, “Up First” from NPR and “Mac OS Ken” from Ken Ray. Then later in the day I’ll reopen the app to the same playlist and listen to “The Morning Stream” by Scott Johnson & Brian Ibbott, “Fresh Air” by Terry Gross/NPR, and “Daily Tech News/Good Day Internet” by Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane and friends. I also have a playlist of weekly audio podcasts and a few video podcasts that I watch. In all I’m subscribed to over 50 podcasts, some of whom are “on hiatus” or like mine, JBB’s Final Thoughts, publish on an “irregular” schedule. So, I get my news mostly from audio podcasts. At this point it’s probably unlikely that I’ll suddenly revert to my father and spend my mornings with the LA Times spread across the kitchen table. I could probably do with much less FaceBook doom scrolling and more “healthy” information habit. But what is that? 

Time for the interactive part of this “experience.” I’ve created a poll using Google Forms to find out what your daily/regular news routine looks like. Please take the poll in the following embedded window. I’ll check in on the result between now and Sunday and next Wednesday I’ll share the results of the poll. Thanks in advance for your participation.