All the news that’s fit to…what?

Funny story: Apparently Steve Jobs hates the NY Times iPad app.

Been thinking a lot about my own news consumption habits lately (as in…oh…the last 8 years). But especially today, because I totally missed the Nashville flood until my friend Whitney tweeted about it this afternoon. Honestly, hadn’t heard anything about it.

I spend pretty much all day every day immersed in tech news sites.When it comes to non-tech news, I get almost all of it from The Daily Show and from links I see posted on Twitter (I follow mostly journalists and news organizations on Twitter).I also read The New Yorker, Wired, and New York magazines, but those aren’t really sources of “hard news.” On a day-by-day level, my news consumption is admittedly a bit scattershot.

I don’t think I’m that different from my peers (could be wrong though), but I’m probably vastly different from older demographics for three reasons: I watch no TV news, read no newspapers, and listen to no radio. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I did any of those things…probably following the election results back in 2008. Overall, I rely on my Twitter friends to curate my news for me, instead of having an editor in a newsroom do it.

Sometimes I feel guilty about that. I know 60 Minutes does quality journalism, I know there is valuable information coming out of Meet the Press and the other Sunday morning talk shows. Many of the newshounds I respect swear by NPR. And say what you want about The New York Times: I think the organization serves an extremely important, hard-to-replicate public good.I even majored in print journalism in college! I’ve just never gotten into the habit of reading a newspaper or watching the serious news shows.

I’m too impatient to consume information that way. By the time the newspaper hits the front porch, it’s too old. And I’m not going to spend time watching a TV newscast that is 15 percent commercials, 10 percent “human interest stories,” 20 percent celebrity news. The web generation as a whole demands absolute relevance, and a very high signal-to-noise ratio that TV just doesn’t deliver. And besides, it’s so much faster to read a news story than to watch that same story read on the air.

I even feel that way about Sports Center.  Life is too short to spend an hour watching NASCAR and hockey highlights (and commercials), waiting for those two game recaps that I’m interested in.

I bumped into a good friend of mine recently who works as the host of her own web video show and also as a reporter for a national news show. She puts a lot of thought into how to help her shows grab viewers, especially younger viewers who are used to a level of interactivity that they get on the Web. Twitter use and crowd-sourced news are some of the more popular methods right now, but I think the jury is out on whether they’re effective at grabbing new viewers or just at ticking off existing viewers (and watering down the newscast with amateur news analysis from @JoeBlow28). If the networks and newspapers want me to change my media habits, it’s going to take something much more radical.

I’m not sure what that is. My friend is working on some great out-of-the-box ideas, so hopefully some of that will bear fruit. If/when the NYTimes has a better iPad app (and they will, soon), and if/when I get an iPad, I can see my NYTimes consumption increasing quite a bit. Especially if they update the content throughout the day. I would regularly browse a news format like that, and watch embedded videos about subjects I’m interested in. And I’d tolerate display ads, but probably not video ads. No time.

Would you? How do you get your news on a daily basis? I’m interested in hearing about different methods–mine’s perhaps too scattershot. Sorry Nashville. Get dry soon.