Confessions of a news 2.0 junkie

We all know that in an age of social media, news is consumed in many different ways. The days of waiting until the newspaper drops on your front steps to find out what has happened, or having a news anchor inform you “that’s the kind of day it’s been,” are long gone.

But you may not have realized just how much audiences can now control the gathering and distributing of news, until you’ve read this fascinating post in TechCrunch.

The author, Mrinal Desai, is a self-confessed news junkie, which in a 2.0 world, means not just keeping up with hundreds of stories every day, but also distributing those stories to your followers and various news sites. Here’s how Desai describes his addiction:

“Like many out there, I have been, am and always will be a news addict. For many news junkies, it is the fleeting, current fix of information about a breaking topic that interests them, only to be replaced by the next headline. They jump from headline to headline, forgetting the one they just read as they move on to the next one.”

If your idea of being informed involves more than scanning headlines, if it includes possibly spending a few hours with the Sunday New York Times, you will find probably Desai’s news habits to be positively nightmarish. But his post is a revealing look inside the always-on world of news consumption in a 2.0 universe, and well worth reading.