I have an admission to make. I’m not proud of it nor do I recommend it for my children.
I hate hearing, reading and often even knowing about sad and unsettling world events or just plain bad news. Especially if I can do nothing to alter or change it. Or protect myself, and those I treasure, from being affected by it.
When I am in a group and someone alludes to something they just read about in the Wall Street Journal or saw on the front page of the New York Times, I smile and nod along with the most erudite smile I can muster. But really, and I am openly admitting, I don’t want to know what they are discussing.
Now I’m not talking about grand sweeping events, life and world-altering events, such as the recent Paris shootings or our own 9/11. I’m talking about mothers that lock their babies in a cage in a closet or men that stalk and rape college girls in bars at 2 AM. Or that global warming is sending polar bears on ice cap chips to search for people food, as in people as food, in Alaska. Just yesterday, my sister told me she heard on the news that TSA has found plastic guns that are being broken down and passed through security and can be reassembled once in flight.
Really?! Do I really want to know that? As a white-knuckled flyer, I read the same paragraph on the contents page of People magazine for at least the first fifteen minutes of a flight, definitely through all of take off and until I hear that first “ding” from the pilot announcing 10,000 feet. That dribble in People is my distraction mantra until the beverage cart arrives. This happens at 20,000 feet, by the way, when the flight attendants tie on their aprons and start skipping down the aisle. I tell myself, if the pilot is letting them free to bang around the plane untethered we are hopefully in some smooth air for a bit.
But I don’t want to picture some crazy man behind them in the bathroom (by the pilots no less) assembling six rounds before we have even reached cruising altitude or worse, before the flight attendants have handed me my miniature monogrammed napkin and a drink.
No, you see, I have an unnaturally vivid imagination. So when I hear something horrible, it doesn’t float in one ear and out the other and move on to the next thought. Not me. Thoughts of horrible things sit and fester in my head and are imagined and reimagined in ridiculous detail. What was the baby wearing? Did he/she plea? What were the college girl’s last thoughts?
I accidentally heard, only because my husband left CNN on after he left the room, that there was a terrible black ice pile up on the East Coast and it showed hundreds of cars not piled up back to back accordion-style but scrambled like eggs across six lanes of highway. They said one man was killed getting out of his car in the midst of all that. I have thought and thought about that man. He had survived the crash. He was safe (enough) in his car but then he got out. Was he going to help someone else? A hero? Or was he angry at the man or woman who scrambled into him? Did he call his wife? Did he have kids?
Ok, so I have made my point and probably lost a few readers. But I have also found my news aversion solution.
And it is theSkimm.
theSkimm is a daily email newsletter that is transmitted to subscribers weekday mornings at about 6 a.m., Eastern Time. Although its readers are 70% women, it was introduced to me by my son. Go figure. I guess he is in touch with his feminine side or just loves the writing and humor, like I do.
Anyway, this daily dash of the news, usually no more than three or four paragraphs or sections, delivers events and sports of the day along with a short explanation of the context and import in a “just us talkin'” voice that manages neither to patronize news junkies or alienate uninformed readers. Most of all, it is witty and hip and current and exactly on target. Sort of like South Park, it lays it all out there–conservatives, liberals, all ethnicities together– and throws a potshot or two at anyone and everyone, with equal abandon, so no one can be offended. Not even men. (i.e. son)
I love it for many reasons. I see it as an answer to my prayers for a news source that isn’t doused in bias. It takes almost no time to read and quickly brings me up to speed on what I need to know about the world in order to be a minimally informed citizen of this democracy. And, best of all, it makes me chuckle at even the worst news story because of its clever verbiage and analogies.
And more importantly, it has one click links of explanation to any and all commonly used “newsisms” and acronyms such as what I.S.I.L. actually stands for (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) and who and what a pundit is. (A person who gives opinions in an authoritative manner usually through the mass media.)
But don’t get me wrong. theSkimm is not News 101. It is graduate degree news presented in a succinct, relevant manner. Examples from today’s Skimm reflecting on Obama’s State of the Union:
Climate Change…as in Obama knows some scientists. And they’re telling him last year was the hottest year on record and that needs to change. He spent a lot of time on this.
Cuba…as in Obama didn’t think 50 years of an icy relationship was working for anyone. So, soon Cuba will be open to more Americans. And he reminded everyone that he did that. Insert his happy dance.
It was founded two years ago by Danielle Weisberg, now 27, and Carly Zakin, 28. When it recently celebrated its two-year anniversary, it had more than 500,000 subscribers and a daily open rate of more than 45%. The average media and publishing email campaign has an open rate of 23%, according to MailChimp, an email newsletter service. Women (plus my son) dominate theSkimm readership, most of whom fall into the ‘Millennial” demographic of people 18 to 33 years old.
So as an avid reader and being nearly twice that target age, it can mean a couple of things. I may just like a little humor mixed in with my news. Or perhaps although I have the time to read an entire newspaper cover to cover, I prefer my news in short quipped sentences. Millennial-like. Text-like. No gory details.
Just like my imagination can take it.
Check it out–it’s free, no strings attached.