A media diet (1993) is made up of the things you regularly take in from the mass media: newspapers, magazines, websites, television shows, music, books, etc.
Examples:
Ta-Nehisi Coates (1975- ), blogger for The Atlantic.
In 2010:
- news: The New York Times, The Washington Post
- Internet: Andrew Sullivan, Matthew Yglesias, Talking Points Memo, Slate, The Root, PostBourgie, Alyssa Rosenberg, The Atlantic Wire
- magazines: The Atlantic, The New Yorker
- books: in the evenings, like Claudia L. Bushman’s “In Old Virginia: Slavery, Farming, and Society in the Journal of John Walker” (2001).
Sheryl Salomon (c. 1966- ), managing editor for The Root and, before that, AOL Black Voices.
In 2012:
- news: The Root, The Washington Post, MSNBC, New York Daily News, Sunday New York Times
- black life: Essence, Ebony, Parlour Magazine, Urban Cusp, Color Lines, Richard Prince’s blog, Crew of 42, Crunk Feminist Collective, Black Web 2.0, Black Snob
- opinion: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Charles Blow, Jonathan Capehart
- Twitter: Roland Martin, Rachel Sklar, Melissa Harris-Perry
- podcasts: Confab, Tavis Smiley
- magazines: New York
- television: The Voice, Mad Men
Malcolm Gladwell (1963- ), staff writer at the New Yorker and author of “The Tipping Point”, “Blink”, “Outliers”, etc.
In 2011:
- newspapers: The New York Times at lunchtime on weekdays. On Saturdays: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times
- Internet: The Awl, ESPN.com, Crookedtimber.org and whatever his friend Jacob links to on his Twitter feed
- magazines: Car and Driver, Road & Track, and, best of all, CAR
- academic journals and databases: once a week at the Bobst Library at NYU
- books: in the evening, like Keith Richards’s “Life” (2010)
Al Sharpton (1954- ), reverend, activist, radio and MSNBC host.
In 2011:
- news: The Huffington Post, Politico, The Grio, The Root, Yahoo!, News One
- Google: “Al Sharpton”, “National Action Network”
- newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, New York Daily News
- Twitter: heavy user
- Facebook: two to three times a day
- magazines: read on planes, especially Time, Newsweek, Ebony, most of the nationally-circulated black magazines, Fortune, or BusinessWeek
- television: Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart
- books: in the evening, like Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” (2011) and John Julian Norwich’s “Absolute Monarchs” (2011)
Terry McMillian (1951- ), author of “Waiting to Exhale”, “How Stella Got Her Groove Back”, etc.
In 2010:
- newspapers: USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday New York Times
- radio: when she is driving: NPR
- Internet: CNN and sometimes Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, NPR (loves Terry Gross), Daily Kos, Salon (loves Joan Walsh). Reads news websites mainly for the comments
- Twitter: addicted
- Facebook: feels she has to
- magazines: in the evening
- television: “Entertainment Tonight’, “The Insider”, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann
- books: in the evening, like Mary Ann Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008) and Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (2010)
Listed by two or more:
- newspapers: The New York Times, New York Daily News; Saturdays: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times
- news: The Root, The Huffington Post
- magazines: Ebony
- Twitter: heavy use
- Facebook: yes
- television: Rachel Maddow
- books: in the evening
Listed by three or more:
- newspapers: The New York Times
- news: The Root
- Twitter: yes
- books: in the evening
– Abagond, 2012.
See also:
- The Atlantic Wire: Media Diet – The Atlantic asked over 100 people from the media about theirmedia diet. The source for this post. Click on the pictures above to see their write-ups. I also want to (or did) check out these:
- Moby
- Sasha-Frere Jones of the New Yorker
- Jenna Wortham – tech reporter for the New York Times
- Christiane Amanpour
- Chuck Todd – political geek at MSNBC
- Joan Walsh of Slate
- Terry Gross of NPR
- Margaret Atwood
- Ann Coulter
- Andrea Mitchell
- Gary Shteyngart
- Joseph Epstein, essayist
- Chris Anderson of WIRED
- Lewis Lapham
- Jay Rosen
- David Brooks – Republican Kool-Aid drinker
- Terry McMillan
- Writers and their private libraries
Aba:
That’s why my TV has been off for about 4 years now…
LikeLike
“The Single Story” in action. The news media (national) primarily deals with educated/”race conscious” black people, the news media (local) primarily deals with uneducated/”race conscious” black people and the entertainment industry primarily deals with black athletes/entertainers/criminals (hey, drugs don’t buy themselves!) Therefore, black images are either portrayed as indignant (CNN level), insignificant (local level) or indolent/depraved (Hollywood level.) They don’t portray work-a-day black people (as in our burgeoning middle class, our seniors or our majority *non-criminal* youth) because they’ve streamlined their thought processes re:black people to conform with their prevalent points of contact (AA Studies graduates for the “big boys”, high school dropouts and baby mamas for the small timers and “that guy who spins records and gets that good dope/piff/E” for the producers.) If it wasn’t so stupid, it would be funny.
LikeLike
My primary source of media is the internet and radio and even radio is becoming obsolete to me,I rarely listen for the music and i know the news is bias ,i even have favorites that say this (although that’s not esp way their some my favorites).
What delights me is how much more inclusive,informative ,lower cost and versatile the internet is – for example where else in public can you comment on a topic of interest(with no wait and minimum censor) ,have a permanent copy of your statement(s) and even setup your site where your the editor/producer of content and you control who gets to comment what(at lease at your site).
Now extrapolate that to some of our social problems and I’d say Utopia is not far off.
LikeLike
My news media is pretty limited. I read the New York Times & Economist and watch Al-Jazeera daily. If I have the tv on it’s usually on whatever MSNBC is playing at the moment.
I used to watch Rachel Maddow, Bill O’reilly, Journeyman Pictures and The Young Turks (TYT)
I would read The Guardian, BBC news, Huffington Post, Black Voices, Yahoo news!, The Gleaner, AllAfrica.com, Crooksandliars.com, AJC, and Freakonomics blog
Somewhere along the line I got lazy and caught off a lot of my media sources.
LikeLike