I recently finished The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton and it was, in a word, underwhelming. I started this book with high expectations and maybe that’s where I went wrong, but for a book aiming to be a guide to how we should consume our news moving forward, the author stumbled with most of his assumptions providing anecdotal evidence that I can only describe as “writing from the hip.” Obviously, I realize that a great deal of time and research was put into this book but I finished the book realizing that the intended audience are probably people that probably don’t question the relevance of how news is presented anyway.
Before I get into that, let me tell you what I liked about the book because I’m not trying to come across as cynical or dissatisfied. In actuality, I quite enjoyed the first half of The News. The book is broken up into sections of different types of news. Politics and Celebrity are my favorites. They are extremely fleshed out, and he provides historical intricacies that resonated with me. For example, he uses the ancient city of Athens as an example of how celebrity worship can be accomplished in constructive and even self preserving ways. Admiration can teach us all things about ourselves and eventually highlight the subtle tendencies and talents that would otherwise be left dormant or neglected because of the daily grind of life. The book’s section on Photography is absolutely stunning and worth reading alone. As a proponent of visual arts and media (what does that even mean?) photojournalism has lost a certain luster in traditional news media and Alain de Botton expresses that loss beautifully with the use of photographs. The proof is, how you say, in the desert?
***THIS JUST IN***
Ken Murphy and Lemuria accomplish something very similar with Jackson Photographs by Ken Murphy, due out this July. The book captures the spirit and culture of Jackson as it is. It speaks to the reader/observer through images that resonate the quiet beauty of a city that people have intentionally failed to notice. Ken Murphy guides the eyes of the reader to the majesty of our city unlike any photographer has been able to achieve in quite some time.
***WE NOW RETURN TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM***
Anyway, somewhere towards the second part of the book the sections get more and more pithy. The pieces on Disaster and Consumption are as brief as the news articles he criticizes. It’s at this point that the book feels like someone started playing the “wrap it up music” behind de Botton’s head as he furiously tried to type out a few more sections to finish the book.
My biggest problem comes from the section Personalization. He offers that when users are afforded the ability the personalize their own news (i.e., news channels like Google News and Reddit) a danger lies in shutting out news that could be missed or filtered by the user’s own personal standards. He goes on to offer that the only way to be sure that this doesn’t happen is for the user to approach these channels with a firm understanding of their own self and direction. This is laughably obvious to…umm…well me.
And that’s when I realized…maybe this book isn’t for me. Everything he wrote seems to be intended for proponents of the old system of news. Buying a newspaper, or watching the evening news followed by your local equivalent, ya know, that sort of thing. I grew up with access to the internet. I grew up with the ability to instantly search a subject and call someone out on the supposed truths they were spouting. I grew up with the sneaky suspicion that everyone was lying to me all the time. (Not really, I got a little carried away there.) I grew up in the generation of fact checkers. If I read an article that sounds sensationalized or off, all I have to do is scroll down and check the comments to see how factual or relevant the story really is. I grew up communicating with the stories, instead of consuming them. My opinions about subjects are constantly warping with new information and new texts, and the more and more I talk to people from around the world, the more I realize I have no idea what is ever really going on. The real key is finding out how a story of a starving Malaysian boy’s journey to starting PayPal (totally a real story but don’t fact check me) can impact my life in a meaningful way.
This book is a guide, but it is also question. How should we consume our stories? Some of us have a pretty good idea. I believe in participation and this books serves to invite you to figure out what you believe.
I’m giving this book a 7.5/10.
:Closing Thoughts:
Excerpts from this book should really be used as text material for 9th and 10th graders. I think it would benefit younger readers to have a better understanding of what news media is capable of, and the healthy ways to consume said media. So, if you’re a high school English/economics teacher, give it a read.
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