According to a new NPR article titled Do Digital Gadgets Increase Our Appetite For News? more and more people today are obtaining their news digitally via smartphones and tablets. The article notes that “44 percent of adults now own a smartphone and 18 percent of adults own a tablet.” So it is not surprising that more people than ever are now accessing more news stories than ever before via their smartphones and tablets. However, what is a bit of a surprise is that despite the popularity of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook most people who access news coverage via their mobile devices obtain that news coverage directly from the news source, i.e. CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, The New York Times, BBC etc., via that respective news sources’ website or app instead of through a social networking site.
And as someone who does access news almost entirely through the Internet I do have to mention some of my favorite news apps!
I like Zite which allows you to customize which news categories display so you’ll only be offered news stories in categories of your choice, Fluent News which offers text stories from a great variety of sources including the Associated Press, The Washington Post and the New York Times, CNET which offers tech stories and reviews of all kinds of gadgets, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today which gives you the basic news of the day in categories that mirror those found in the print edition, News Pro (Reuters) which offers up-to-date news stories in a variety of categories including Markets, Stocks, World etc., Today (the companion app to the Today Show), NPR, NPR Music (this one has tons of great audio clips!), NBC Nightly News (the companion app to the evening news broadcast) and Reuters Galleries which offers stunning photos of events happening across the globe with accessible captions but without commentary!
Here’s a link to the NPR article:
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/19/148769188/do-digital-gadgets-increase-our-appetite-for-news
And the previously mentioned apps can be found in the Apple or Android app stores.
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 