North.East.West.South.

In light of our recent John Dos Passos writing assignment, I have been thinking a lot about newspapers and how our means of receiving media have changed so much in the past hundred years. Traditional newspapers used to be the only way to stay up to date on current events. Now we have TV, radio, internet, and a much faster word-of-mouth network due to the rise of cell phones and instant messaging. In the future, each of us will probably just have a little transmitter in our head that beams news stories directly into our brains. (This may seem far-fetched, but imagine what cell phones would look like to someone from the 1800s. It'll happen.)
      Whereas before we had a few major newspaper corporations that decided what stories to report on and what angle to take, we now have every person with an opinion and access to an internet connection. But getting news from the internet only provides the illusion of a wider base of reporters.Those same big corporations still tell us how to think and feel about what is happening in the world today, but now they have several additional means of doing it. Now, instead of going out and buying a newspaper, the news comes right to us at home or in our pockets via cell phone. This is an even more dangerous way of being taught how to think because we are not always on our guard and conscious of it. Sometimes I just want to go online to play sporcle games, and my homepage blasts me with twenty headlines. 
    News in today's world of instant communication and sharing is an even bigger part of life than it has been ever before.