Media Woes

The often brilliant Vicki, who writes over at the modestly named blog Vic tac ular, wrote a post today about her Media Diet.  And let me tell you - it is ridiculous.  The girl basically reads everything written on the internet every single day.  That isn't an exaggeration.   

Which got me thinking about my relationship with the media.  It's rather unilateral, I think.  Let me explain.

In High school, did you ever have one of those really geeky dweebs who had a super major crush on you?  And you thought they were ok and all, but you'd never really like to get with them or anything, except in a freaky American-Pie-band-geek sort of one night stand.  That's how I feel about the media. They're trying so desperately to get in my pants that it kind of turns me off. 

CNN used to be awesome, but now they seem to have taken a more US weekly approach to news.  I remember finally officially turning it off during the Anna Nicole Smith media disaster. 

Fox is and will likely always be awesome.  Not for news, though.  More for gauging just how stupid media executives think we are.  Which is always an important thing to have a grasp on. 

I feel guilty getting news from Jon Stewart.  Mainly because the news he delivers is media centered, so the information isn't about the event being discussed, per se, but rather how the media is covering said event. And also, he's ridiculously liberal, which I happen to enjoy, but it doesn't promote entirely fair media consumption. 

Websites are usually tediously designed, with too much chaos to properly decipher what is news worth hearing about. I absolutely HATE the NY Times layout, which has unfortunately become sort of a model for other websites.  In addition, their headlines typically misdirect you with something that WOULD be interesting to read, only to find out that the story contained beneath it is only remotely related to the over-hyped headline. 

And finally, I tried the twitter feed, but there's just too much to keep up with.  I followed @breakingnews which worked for a while, but there was just SO much.  I couldn't keep up with reading this all the time.  And honestly, most of it was just headlines that one or two people died in Djibouti, which isn't all that important to me (sorry to say). 

(side note - does anyone know how to pronounce the name of this country?  I choose to pronounce it Ja-Booty.  I also choose to pronounce "Duchy" - Dooky - as in the "Grand Dooky of Lithuania" for the country that was the "ancestor" to Belarus).

So right now, I'm sort of getting my news mostly through passive diffusion.  Essentially, that means I'm too lazy.

However, I do occasionally enjoy Yahoo's homepage.  There are four stories you can see at any given time, which you can digest slowly and leisurely. There are usually stories with lots of pictures, which I like, and typically a lot of lists.  The only downside is that the majority of the stories deal with sports, and I seriously couldn't give a crap about sports.  More on that later though.

So, please, please, please help me!  I want to be up to date on the news of the world, but I need it fed to me in nice, easy spoonfuls.  Preferably spoonfuls with lots of pictures, and not much actual reading.  Any suggestions?