January 17, 2008
I went on the Internet with the intent to find out which presidential candidates won the Michigan primaries. I figured this information would be at my hand as soon as my Yahoo home page popped up. I for one consider the presidential election important and relative news. I, however, had to search to find this information. The headline story when I opened up my home page was “Paparazzi arrested for chasing Britney Spears” and “Should Spears be allowed to see Her boys”. No where on the Yahoo homepage was it immediately obvious who had won the Michigan primary. I had to search Yahoo to find the answer. Now, I had never realized before that Yahoo (and I am sure many other search engines) fill their home page with news that is not relevant to issues that effect MY daily life and the life of other Yahoo-goers. I usually skip over the Yahoo news and check my e-mail or Facebook so I never paid attention to how unrelated the news stories are. Don’t get me wrong, Britney’s current life is controversial but how she conducts her life is of no matter of mine or any one else’s for that matter. I have many opinions on why the Spears’ news story is so much more appealing that who the next president will be—it could be that we are living vicariously through Spears or that we want to avoid discussing important issues because that means we have to face a problem. I do not know the answer and I do not know why the media is so focused on Britney Spears and takes a blind eye to world issues. It reminds me of the time that the NBC breaking story was that Paris Hilton had lost her beloved dog Tinkerbell. I personally believe we really don’t need to know that information. Stories like this show that the focus of the media is changing and the goals of the new media are not parallel to the goals of the older media.

I went on the Internet with the intent to find out which presidential candidates won the Michigan primaries. I figured this information would be at my hand as soon as my Yahoo home page popped up. I for one consider the presidential election important and relative news. I, however, had to search to find this information. The headline story when I opened up my home page was “Paparazzi arrested for chasing Britney Spears” and “Should Spears be allowed to see Her boys”. No where on the Yahoo homepage was it immediately obvious who had won the Michigan primary. I had to search Yahoo to find the answer. Now, I had never realized before that Yahoo (and I am sure many other search engines) fill their home page with news that is not relevant to issues that effect MY daily life and the life of other Yahoo-goers. I usually skip over the Yahoo news and check my e-mail or Facebook so I never paid attention to how unrelated the news stories are. Don’t get me wrong, Britney’s current life is controversial but how she conducts her life is of no matter of mine or any one else’s for that matter. I have many opinions on why the Spears’ news story is so much more appealing that who the next president will be—it could be that we are living vicariously through Spears or that we want to avoid discussing important issues because that means we have to face a problem. I do not know the answer and I do not know why the media is so focused on Britney Spears and takes a blind eye to world issues. It reminds me of the time that the NBC breaking story was that Paris Hilton had lost her beloved dog Tinkerbell. I personally believe we really don’t need to know that information. Stories like this show that the focus of the media is changing and the goals of the new media are not parallel to the goals of the older media.

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