This week, I consumed radio, podcasts, a TV show, a movie, books, paper newspapers, some magazines, and lots of online media, including text, video, and other visual media. I also listen to Pandora almost continuously. But here’s a sampling of 10 stories I followed down the rabbit hole — what they were, how I got there, and what I read.

1. David Carr

David Carr, the New York Times journalist, died on Thursday night, and my personal networks were filled with stories by and about him. I also read through the syllabus he provided for a class and either read or saved many of those stories.

Total sources: 13 media items
Origin: Word of mouth
Primary sources: New York Times, The Atlantic, Boing Boing, Wikipedia
Discovery method: Facebook, Google Search
Shared: No
Discussed: Offline

Comments: I don’t let push notifications into my life. My phone demands enough of my attention as is, so I haven’t added news alerts to my media diet. But people around me have, and David Carr’s death, along with two other stories I read deeply this week (not included here), came to my attention when someone else received a push notification that they thought was worth talking about. The other two examples were the FBI Director’s speech on race and the shooting in Copenhagen.

2. Fast Track Trade Agreements

I was on the New York Times website and saw this headline: “Left and Right Align in Fighting Obama’s Trade Agenda,” which caught my attention. I began digging around and reading more about this.

Origin: New York Times (online)
Total Sources: 9
Primary sources: New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Bill Moyers, EFF, Washington Times, Ukiah Daily Journal, Cleveland.com, Huffington Post
Discovery method: Google Search
Shared: No
Discussed: No

Comments: Google search was a big driver of my media consumption this week, but Facebook is a close second (and, likely, is usually the most critical driver of my consumption). (Here’s the data.) I recently “liked” some news organizations on Facebook to try and get stories that aren’t just New York Times and New Yorker in my feed; according to this, it worked. I read a lot more news from Al Jazeera and the Washington Post than I used to, for example. NYT now makes up just 15% of the media I consumed and the New Yorker just 3% (and here’s this data).

3. Charlie Baker and his Budget

I was at the MIT Knight Science Journalism offices last weekend and saw a cover story in the Sunday paper about Baker’s left-meets-right cabinet appointments. I was interested, so read and shared the story. Then, I started reading more deeply about the cabinet appointments, proposed budget fixes, and Baker’s history.

Origin: Boston Globe (print)
Total Sources: 4
Primary sources: Boston Globe, WBUR, Wikipedia, Boston.com
Discovery method: Google Search, Referral Links
Shared: Yes
Discussed: No

Comments: The traditional idea of “impressions” really does seem to matter. The more times I saw a headline, the more likely I was to click on some version of it, and if I saw it in multiple media formats (print and online here, radio and online below), I was most likely to pay attention. 

4. West Coast Port Labor Dispute

I listen to the NPR “hourly news update” on my way to class most mornings, and I heard a tiny story about the West Coast ports closing for a “long weekend” amid labor contract disputes. I wanted to know more and am still frustrated by the coverage I did find. There are lots of big gaps in the coverage.

Origin: NPR News app
Total Sources: 4
Primary sources: NPR (app), New York Times, USA Today, Longshore and Shipping News
Discovery method: Google Search, Referral Links
Shared: No
Discussed: No

Comments: (a) When I am busy, radio is my go-to news source. I can make dinner, walk to class, take the T, or otherwise get through a jam-packed day while still getting a dose of news. (b) There are some blind spots in my media habits — I didn’t know about this story until this week, despite that that it’s been unfolding for a long time! 

5. No Big Bang?

A friend of mine shared a link on Facebook claiming that a new paper suggests that there may have been no big bang. I read the article, wasn’t totally sure about the science — which was mostly math. I tagged in another mathematician friend and asked for comments, read some paper summaries, and I now think the new paper has been wrongly interpreted by most coverage.

Origin: Facebook post
Total Sources: 4
Primary sources: Phys.org, arxiv.org, Brian Oberlin (personal blog), Discovery News (video)
Discovery method: Facebook, Referral Links
Shared: No
Discussed: Yes

6. Oregon Gov. Kitzhaber’s Resignation

Oregon’s four-term governor, John Kitzhaber, has been embroiled in an ethics scandal with his fiance (a woman I used to interview about clean energy topics when I worked in Oregon). I saw a headline that he was resigning on the Longshore and Shipping News, above, and Googled for more information. I leaned on friends for more local perspective and links.

Origin: Referral link from website
Total Sources: 5
Primary sources: Statesman Journal, New York Times, OregonLive, Longshore and Shipping News
Discovery method: Facebook, SMS, Google Search
Shared: Yes
Discussed: Yes

Comments: I was surprised by the ways that “dark social” played a role in my week. Sharing links in SMS, chat, and email helped me get information from people who were closer to a story in some way.

7. Gendered Language in Teaching Evaluations

I clicked through on a friend’s Facebook post about this visualization, and I enjoyed seeing what I could find. I shared it on Facebook and several of my academic friends re-shared the post, keeping it top of mind for me all week. I found a link to the New York Times writeup of it to share with a friend who asked for a link to more commentary on the topic.

Origin: Facebook
Total Sources: 2
Primary sources: Ben Schmidt’s data viz (personal website), New York Times
Discovery method: Facebook
Shared: Yes
Discussed: Yes

Comments: I’d like to stop making the NYT my default news source when I send links to others. There must have been other good write-ups; this was just laziness!

8. BoSnow

Who could not end up following this story? This is one that was entirely “pushed” to me through social media.

Origin: Facebook, Instagram
Total Sources: 5+
Primary sources: Facebook, Instagram, Washington Post, WBUR, Boston Globe
Discovery method: Instagram (app), Facebook
Shared: Yes
Discussed: Yes

Comments: Social media sharing is easiest for me when it’s mobile-friendly, but I prefer to write thoughtful posts on desktop. More than half of things I shared this week, I shared from my laptop, even though I spent several days away from my computer. 

9. Treadmill Desk

I have a group of friends who are constantly talking and joking about standing desks and walking desks. One of them emailed out a NYMag.com article claiming that they don’t work. I read the article, clicked through to read the study. I delighted in debunking the article — particularly the headline, which was just WRONG — and added a comment.

Origin: Email
Total Sources: 3
Primary sources: NYMag, Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, The Onion
Discovery method: Email, Referral Links
Shared: Yes
Discussed: Yes

10. San Francisco’s Development Snarl

I think and talk a lot about the development challenges facing San Francisco right now. A friend posted an article about supply and demand in housing; he tagged me in to the conversation because he thought I would disagree. I had a interesting discussion in the comment thread with the group of folks on which we found some common ground…. but I was also horrified by some of what was said. Very interesting, and part of a longer ongoing discussion over weeks and months.

Origin: Facebook
Total Sources: 2
Primary sources: Planetizen, Thrillist
Discovery method: Facebook notifications
Shared: No
Discussed: Yes

Comments: I love having discussions with people on Facebook, and I’m always surprised by who shows up and what’s said. The San Francisco development conversation, gun control, and Ferguson have been very rich discussions, in particular. So grateful for having it as a tool for getting outside my daily bubble; having a long list of friends from different parts of (and times in) my life really helps. 

Read more

Here’s a chart of the various news media sources (excluding a few paper-based materials) and a calendar of my media consumption, as well. If you want to see all the things I looked at, and my notes on why, on what device, what I did with it, etc., well: all the embarrassing details are here.  I kept a record of my media consumption using Chrome History, Pocket, Evernote, RescueTime, and hand-written notes about radio, paper and Kindle-based media consumption.

 All images courtesy Flickr users under Creative Commons license.