Hank’s Story Continues

It’s been a while since Hank last visited us. What has he been up to?

For one Hank has been struggling with reading his newspaper. Used to be he awoke with the thumping of newspaper deliveries in his neighborhood. Around 4:30 am the muffled sound of a worn engine began its circuitous rounds of the neighboring blocks accompanied by a soft whump of a newspaper landing on the driveway or front walk. As the sound grew nearer, Hank knew his paper was about to arrive.

So he’d climb out of bed, grab a shirt and shorts, stumble to the bathroom, then to the kitchen to begin the coffee, and on to the front walk to retrieve his paper.

Returning to the kitchen, he laid out cup, saucer, spoon and sugar for his daily brew. He settled at the dinette and spread out the paper. The coffee finished its last rumbles of preparation and was ready to fill a steaming cup.

With that poured and some sugar stirred in (3 heaping teaspoons!), Hank surveyed the front page of the paper. He followed each of the stories as they jumped to later pages and was finally satisfied that he had read the leading stories of the day and related side bars.

He then turned to the back page. Sports were not his thing so he quickly paged backwards toward the front of the paper. He eliminated all the junk he didn’t want to read, separated the crossword puzzles and comics and then continued his backward scan toward the opinion page. This was his last stop of his morning read. He quickly read his favorite writers, skipped those he knew as idiots, and then cast a jaundiced eye over the letters to the editor. These he read very quickly. Most were ideological buzz bombs he detested.

Finally he was done. Accomplished in just under 44 minutes. Now to the comics and puzzles. Those ate up another 11 minutes. Three cups of coffee (and nine teaspoons of sugar) plus the paper all in less than one hour!

Hank slowly cleaned up the kitchen and moved to the office and computer. There he cleared his incoming emails, then scanned his favorite websites for news focused on his interests. Twenty minutes later he was ready for the shower and shave.

In the shower Hank contemplated his daily routine. He wondered about spending an hour with the newspaper. Increasingly he noted how time spent in this activity was declining. So, too, the paper’s size. It was now narrower, shorter and fewer pages. The slimmed down format also came with slimmed down content. More and more he was noticing his internet routine replacing his newspaper routine. With a shudder he knew, he just knew, that one day he would cancel his newspaper and turn exclusively to the internet for his news.

Hank already had reduced his following of TV news programs unless they were panel discussions of topics he was interested in covered in more detail. Those were thought provoking programs, but so too were documentaries. Newscasts, however, were either too bland or too suggestive of point of view. Clearly his network of choice was churning the news to sustain its market following. With another shudder Hank knew he would eventually avoid TV news programming in favor of his own internet scan.

Toweling off from his shower, Hank now catalogued the news items he felt were more important for the day. Which ones should be important in the mind of the public, and which ones were of particular interest to him? And how closely aligned were the two lists? Interesting. More and more the two lists simply didn’t match.

Hank wondered what was happening in the news industry. Was there intentional manipulation present? The fact that he even asked the question gave him a strong clue that it was. Interesting.

Hank resolved to develop a daily routine that relied more on the internet as his source of news rather than public programming and newspapers. The first challenge was identifying the reliable sources for factual news. Associated Press items were trustworthy in Hank’s mind. So too were specific publishers and news gathering organizations. These outlets researched news events and wrote about them using old journalism methods: what, who, where, when. The why and how were for later analysis when the facts were known to be complete or nearly so. Time would help settle some aspects of the story, but the how and why were clearly for careful consideration later. Meanwhile the what, when and where were filed away in the mind for recall and later analysis.

Developing the list of sources was not an easy chore. But in a few months Hank had what he felt comfortable with. Now to implement it and allow his curiosity to expand his read as needed to the side stories.

Hank’s process is not fail-safe. It is important, however, that he felt it necessary to do it in the first place. Perhaps the rest of us need to follow suit?

We'll follow Hank's progress from time to time. Stay tuned!

July 13, 2015