WAR BREAKS OUT IN EUROPE ATOMIC BOMB DROPPED ON HIROSHIMA DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN KENNEDY SLAIN ON DALLAS STREET MAN WALKS ON MOON
Photo: Mark Zillman
Still a cool headline.
If I had customized news, I might not have seen these historic headlines that graced papers across the country.
Today, thanks to Google News, along with My Yahoo! and myCNN.com, users can pick and choose what headlines they want to see. Now, I am all for power to the people, but this self censorship is as stupid as it is dangerous. The average user must at least see some exposure to news other than what is customized for them.
That's not to say users don't want customized news. But it is a lot easier and healthier for conservatives to head over to WorldNetDaily and for liberals to check out Mother Jones.
But you need a broader perspective to the world. Sure, the cable news channels and major papers all filter what you and I are going to see. But the New York Times' headlines and the Fox News Channel crawl of the bottom of the screen still give valuable news information to both Republicans and Democrats.
If in the 1930s you had My Yahoo! and didn't subscribe to any European news, you would never know that another global war was about to be unleashed. If your myCNN.com account did not accept any news about Democrats, you may have missed the JFK assassination headline. And if your Google News didn't pick up any NASA headlines, well, you probably would still wonder if we landed on the moon.
The point is: We never know when the next big news story, and thus headline, is going hit. And sometimes you have to check out a newspaper front page to see what in the world is going on.
So read a front page. The Eagle has landed.
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