What I mean by this is that you will not hear the same moans and groans about missing the 2008 Presidential debates or the 5-o’clock CNN news. Why, because youth are still not paying adherent attention to present day national and global issue. I do admit that UNC’s campus is much more up-to-par on current events than the students were at my high school in Raleigh, NC, but I still do not see any urgency within students to hear the daily headlines.
So perhaps you are saying to yourself, “No that’s not me”, I know what’s going on in the world, I read the Daily Tarheel. The Daily Tarheel, or the DTH as it is commonly referred to around campus, is the daily campus newspaper that is written and edited by UNC students. If this is you, well then you my friend are thinking ill. Although it is a great resource for hearing about campus events, what Chancellor Thorp has to say about space issue, or who slapped the Pit Preacher it fails to provide substantial news. The DTH is a local newspaper that reports news in the community. Although it has some blurbs on national and global news, the paper has the assumption that its readers are already familiar with national news. For example, last week Justin Bailey wrote an article reassuring students that Wachovia-sponsored One Cards would continue to work even as the fate of the giant banks were in the air. When writing his article, Bailey had the idea that the audience already knew that Wells Fargo bought out Wachovia and was simply calming fears.
You may argue that local news affects you as a citizen of the U.S. and student at UNC Chapel Hill; National news is a way for you as a student to connect your studies to real life. Economics, global issues and your English and composition classes all can connect to what is written or televised in the news. Real life issues puts the rhetoric your learn into practice. Reading about real life situations might even help you understand a topic in class.
These are the front pages to the The Daily Tarheel and New York Times of Wednesday, October 8. Please note the very different headlines.(The Congress in the DTH refers to the Student Congress.)
The politics of high school socialites may be more interesting than what Ben Bernanke is doing to the Federal Funds rate. But as the next generation we must educate ourselves on global and national issues so that we can lead our nation better than the generation before us.
So I give you this piece of advice. Pick up a New York Times or Washington Post and on your way to class in the morning. Throughout the day when you have 5 or 10 minutes here and there read an article. Or if you prefer electronic sources, read those yahoo or google newsfeeds. But if this is too much to do then just read the headlines- you’ll at least get the gist of things.
So I give you this piece of advice. Pick up a New York Times or Washington Post and on your way to class in the morning. Throughout the day when you have 5 or 10 minutes here and there read an article. Or if you prefer electronic sources, read those yahoo or google newsfeeds. But if this is too much to do then just read the headlines- you’ll at least get the gist of things.
xoxo
g.
1 comment:
As sad as I was to not have my daily dose of the CW, I was glad I got to actually spend that time to do other more productive things. It's true that most people here think that they know what's going on just because they read the DTH. I, personally, don't have that much of a problem with it, but I don't use it for anything more significant than to further read about the game on Saturday or just skim the headlines. When it comes to REAL news I pay more attention. I know it's rare, but since being in this English class I just care more about what's happening in the world around us. We put ourselves in a tiny bubble in Chapel Hill, and tend to forget about the rest of the world. For instance, I don't really know what's going on in popular culture anymore because it's not that big of a deal here. I don't know what star what or sometimes even what music is considered "new". I feel so out of touch since moving to a college campus, and it's my own fault. It might be because a newspaper like The New York Times tends to not talk how we as students speak. This makes the writing harder to understand, and less likely to be read. One day, we'll all be reading these big time newspapers and wonder how we ever found any pleasure in something like DTH. For now, I'll stick to moaning about waiting yet another week for new CW shows with the rest of them. :)
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