I asked my students this morning "Where do you get your news?" I wasn't looking for a specific answer like Fox News or The Eagle or Ezra Klein's daily blog Wonkbook. What I wanted to hear was that they consulted a variety of source. None of us can get by with sourcing our news from one place. Variety is not just the spice of life. It is how we can triangulate the world and figure it out. Regularly consulting more than one source is good. Mixing it up so that you don't always hear the same point of view is even better.
Of course, that takes us out of our comfort zone.
I found the photo that I led with this morning on my Google news reader. It came across on a blog that I try to read regularly. When I followed the link http://2photo.ru/en/post/19380, I found the website of
Photographer David Zaitz
who does really fantastic work. In just a brief moment, I made a discovery and learned about something I had never known about before. It's less threatening to learn about artists and "cool" things than it is to learn about things that might rearrange your underlying conception of the world. I force myself to do it anyway. It's why I read all the op ed pieces in the local paper, instead of just the ones that will make me nod in agreement. Sometimes it feels like drinking from a fire hose to read, watch, and listen to all the different things I tune into every day. But I do it anyway.I hope you will take a step towards the uncomfortable zone and choose to read/watch/listen to at least one source of news that may contradict your usually held opinions.
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