Effects of a portfolio
Just around the end of the year 2002 I started to realize something: I need to start reading more diversified news.
Let me start with a comparison: Most people know that stereo beats mono. However you still need two speakers to achive the stereo effect. In order to get the all-around-you, cinema-like experience, even more speakers are needed. The same thing applies to news. With just one view of the world’s events reported from a single source, be it print, radio or TV, there simply is not enough differing angle to get a clear picture. There is only one direction the sound is coming from, so to say.
But let me not lose sight of the original statement: Diversified news. Being someone with the luxury of an abundance in free time, I started looking for different news sources in addition to those I had previously sought out.
To make a long story short, I ended up reading the online editions of Spiegel magazine and Telepolis, the former belonging to Germany’s most respected weekly, the latter an online-only I’m hard pressed to classify. Having a lot of friends in the US, I thought it could prove useful to try to understand their perspective. So here come The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Washington Post. Last but certainly not least, there is the UK. Both The Guardian and The Independent add to the daily toll on my eyes.
There are probably two things on your mind by now:
1) Boy does he have a lot of free time, and
2) Aren’t the majority if not all of these papers liberal?
The devil, as always is in the details: Of course I don’t read all those papers front-to-back or, as we’re talking online editions, in-depth. I try to stick to the editorials, opinion pieces, columns and letters. As a matter of fact, there is not so much difference in reporting within the normal articles. A plane crash for example is a tragedy, is a horrible accident, is human and/or technical failure is still a plane crash. Point being, the hard facts of an event don’t change. Therefore my focus on pieces with differing views.
Now to address those views: It’s true that the papers I read are mainly liberal. One could go into lenghts discussing the topic of why I choose to narrow it down this way but suffice it to say that the occasional piece of liberal outrage against the Murdoch empire is enough to make my skin crawl.
So this is it. I spend about an hour a day to read through this stuff. I have the time to do so mainly because I am both an insomniac and a student.
So what does all this have to do with my title “Effects of a portfolio”. Today, 2003-04-24, something I had not prepared for happened. The Independent started its internet portfolio system, making some texts available in only either a pay-per-view or a subscription service. I can afford neither.
A real chunk of what I perceived to be my personal 360° panorama view of the world vanished from one day to another. Let us hope that this will not matter in the great scheme of things, for I know that there are people who navigate not with 360°, not with 180° but maybe with a narrow 15° viewing angle towards the world that can only be described as ignorance.
But, honestly, how many readers of The Independent’s online edition are going to belong into this last, worrisome group?
Jan Olbrecht
Kaiserslautern, Germany
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