That a “Tik-Tokker” is a 21st-Century Newsreader is Weird.

National Public Radio ran a piece on March 26th about a 20-something Black woman reading “The New York Times” via TikTok, who went viral. Those who find grave news stories depressing, and are turned away welcome this…

As a middle-age GenXer who knew the world before the Web and social media came to cultural primacy, the notion of watching someone read and explain to viewers a news story is weird. As described it doesn’t resemble watching a news anchor. Isn’t that lazy on the viewers’ parts? (Then again many find a subscription to the “Sunday New York Times” is costly.)

According to NPR, “Kelsey Russell, 23, makes TikToks — sometimes 8 minutes long — in which she goes through a single article and explains the context along the way.” To my mind, If this helps presumably older readers to return from their anxiety over oft upsetting or depressing news headlines, this is a virtue. She sought a retreat from her grad studies at Columbia University by reading to grasp her world.

(image courtesy Blavity)

Being committed to self-discipline and self-refinement, the idea or premise of relying on a digital middleman seems lazy. But If people find a TikTok video to be useful entrée to improved civic engagement, then…maybe it’s a virtue?

She told NPR, ‘”I got a subscription to the “Sunday New York Times” physical copy for my birthday, and I think that bad Gen Z biddies should read the newspaper,” she says in one video.’

I wish that my financial life allowed me to subscribe to newspapers.

“Amid a rapidly changing media landscape, the rise of disinformation, and a bewildering array of social media options, Russell has found a niche as a modern day newsreader — and become a media literacy expert along the way”

“I really felt like I knew nothing. I was struggling to connect what was going on outside of the world to my studies,” she told NPR.’

To have to a regular habit of reading for civic knowledge, and enrichment is great. To want this cerebral marks you as minority in the United States among those great majority who turn to more shallow digital distractions.

// “When I was growing up in elementary and middle school, I would sit down [and] read the newspaper,” she said. “My dad would do the same. My mom would do the same. So I said, ‘Let me just go back to what made me happy as a child.’”…. 

// Were I a superior man, I wouldn’t judge those who turn to a social medium for credible news. — But the platforms’ credibility as providers of truth is in the gutter. 

With the 1980s and 90s as my formative years, I have different expectations of where curious adults should choose their news and info. The comfort and normalcy, which younger adults have with social media (and meager cynicism) may mean/connote Ms. Russell’s clips may be a salve for social-media-fed ignorance.