Why It’s Important To Your Career To Read Foreign Based Media
Dorothy said it first. This isn’t Kansas, Toto. Gone are the days when you can do life by catching the front page of your local paper or five minutes of the TV news . . . including weather. Our world is becoming more and more connected, and if you can’t speak the language of international news and events, you have to at least be conscious of them.
Truth is, you probably work for a company that is, itself, international, or is part of an international conglomerate. So there may even be international career opportunities in your future.
The question becomes – how do you keep up? Since it’s doubtful you’ve got the time to read enough individual sources and sort through literally tens of thousands of articles that are published every day, you’ve got to find a better way. Technology and the internet has combined to bring a solution, the news aggregator or news conglomerator.
Aggregators and Conglomerators – What They Do
One of the biggest challenges we all face is filtering out fake news. Or news from sources that are so biased the results are worthless. While aggregators gather nearly everything out there, they also offer you the opportunity to select your trusted sources for your primary news feed. You can also filter out types of news in which you have no interest. Hate sports? It’s gone.
You get the top stories from sites and sources that are of interest and that you trust to deliver an accurate account of the news.
What Are the Options?
The old standby was Google News. But we’ve come a long ways and there are lots of options, including:
- News360.
- Flipboard.
- NewsNow.
- Pocket.
- SmartNews.
- Feedly.
- Gentle Reader
Ms. Career Girl uses News360 and Gentle Reader. Gentle Reader is one of the newest iterations. Here’s a snippit of info on those:
Gentle Reader
Gentle Reader says you can boost your career by reading foreign-based media. We think thats true. And they have a great mix of media sources from around the world. Gentle Reader gives you the freshest content in an easy-to-read format with no clutter and no ads. Plus, you can add Twitter feeds to be part of your newsy meal.
News360
News360 is an app that learns what you enjoy and finds stories you’ll like around the web. You can tag stories with a thumb up or down and it learns what you like, although it’s not perfect at knowing whether your nixing Alabama politics or some other element of the article. The good news (no pun intended) is that they’re continually improving the platform.
We recommend both of the above, to see what you’re not seeing as well as what you are.
Why Should You Engage in An International Mix of News?
Reading across foreign based media gives you the edge in a job market that values the ability to think different and relate to diverse audiences. Get ahead of the game and follow the news around the world. See how the story changes as each country wakes up and journalists and news editors from East to West start to report, analyse and comment on events. It might just give you the chance to make up your own mind.
Makes sense right? So why aren’t you doing it already? Sign up!
