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Friday, October 23, 2015

Reporting For ..

The world has become digital .People get their daily news round ups from the social media,the ubiquitious news reporting sites,the local news paper 's e-version on the web.For all these sources and for someone who consumes content on the web a lot ,one thing I have shied away from is reading news sites extensively.
Sure I go around catching up on daily news and twitter (the most useful amongst the social media) stirs up a lot of content for me .However with the routine of work taking over ,it becomes tough to peruse digital sites.Hence the morning newspaper devoid of all tamashas still serves me as the primary goto source.

Pieces of investigative journalism which usually require a more keen reading are best absored on newspapers .The worst part of news websites is that everyone tailors their content according to what is most visisted and according to what you have read .If you didn't know Yahoo has about 10000 different personalization algorithms to show up different news to everybody and more often than not these are the popular news sources.

Hence the newspaper,something which I can pick and choose and more importantly browse quickly.

However the odd times that I do read up on the net,I try to look for longform articles,the articles which read more like a book,but are so exquisitely crafted that you just have this obsessive need to keep reading.

If you have not seen this ,https://longform.org/lists/best-of-2014 ,you should .The class of writing in long-form is such  a world apart.

In 2014 I wondered if a better story than the-family-that-robs-banks-together would ever appear.

In 2015 (and if this does not make it to best long form awards list,I will be damned) has appeared.

For about 15 mintues of reading it and the thought process following it,It was like watching a move and seeing scenes in front of me .

About 25 years of reading newspapers in earnest,15 years of reading digital content,consuming almost every cricket article that has been written , I doubt anything better than the below has been written.

This is reporting nirvana .George Bell ,RIP
Sniffing a fetid odor, George Bell's neighbor called 911