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My father tells me - "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" and it kind of was eye-opening. I really don't. I wish I paid more attention

My father tells me - "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" and it kind of was eye-opening. I really don't. I wish I paid more attention to local news, local politics, and perhaps check-in on international news on a weekly basis. The internet changed all this. When I was growing up, my dad read local newspaper daily. National and international news were briefly covered in the local paper. He'd delve into the Economist and the sunday edition to catch up with the rest. This is almost unheard of today.

salt-thrower 5y ago
Personally, I've subscribed to several RSS feeds for local/state news outlets in my area. That helps me stay more in touch with local stuff. Then I just do a quick scan of AP News for international stuff.
damnyankees 5y ago
> "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" In and of itself, I don't. Unfortunately, the local politicians toe the party line and ape the Big City / Big State politicians, the Cuomos and the Garcettis of the world. Suppose you could paint it at some level as "know thy enemy" (pardon the abrasiveness of the wording) because those states are something of a test bed for what to expect from the local folks, but a year or so down the line whether that's "You must wear a mask and cannot let your child use that swing set," or "policies that demoralize the police and undermine anything resembling a reasonable standard of rule-of-law, or "we must tear down statues of elder statesmen ("divisive", old, racist White men) while erecting statues of individuals that praised and sought to emulate the Haitian revolution and its genocidal outcomes." With that said, I can't stand that all of my local options routinely shove rage-bait National stories in your face. There is no true "local only" coverage.
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  - damnyankees 5y ago
    - LordDragonfang 5y ago
      - damnyankees 5y ago
        LordDragonfang 5y ago
        You are describing a behavior that is directly in violation of the Hacker News guidelines >Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to. If your comment is so divisive that you think it would get your account deleted, it probably doesn't belong on HN. >Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. >Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html edit: If nothing else, I'm impressed by the sheer audacity of creating a second throwaway to continue this argument after your first got flagged, and then accusing me of being the flamer.
        hunter21b 5y ago
- 1270018080 5y ago
  Self awareness and the phrase "rage-bait" could do you wonders.
  - damnyankees 5y ago
    Frankly, I don't follow. Perhaps of these issues the only one that could be construed as a non-serious issue is the topic of statues. At the same time, I find it rather queer that when I take a stroll through the local park I am confronted with the statue of a man who wanted to kill everyone with my skin tone in a time where we are supposed to be seeking some sort of harmony.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  - damnyankees 5y ago
    No, you just have differing politics and beliefs. In my twelve years of browsing HN I've read many comments of that sort. Personally, I tend not to leave a comment unless I feel there is a substantive element to my reply.
    - wonderwonder 5y ago
      It has nothing to do with differing opinions, its just ironic that you chastise the media for posting rage baiting articles and then make a post that is pretty much only rage baiting and opinion based.
rootusrootus 5y ago
Exactly. Now the major team sport is who you want for President, even though he arguably has the lowest impact on your life. As long as he doesn't hit The Button. IMO people ought to put down social media, put down the national news, and pick up their local newspaper. Read about their own mayor, city council, whatever. And maybe even get involved -- depending on the size of your city, an ordinary individual can actually get involved at a meaningful level.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The president has a very significant impact on many people’s lives via judicial nominees. The biggest this year is expected to be the effects of the 3 Republican Supreme Court judges installed by Trump on many women’s access to abortions, but many other judges in the system are appointed by presidents as well that make decisions that affect many people’s lives.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I think your example just highlights my point. Currently abortion rights are enshrined at the federal level. The SCOTUS is not going to ban abortions. They are going to throw it right back down to the state level. If you lose access to abortions, it is because your local politicians decided to ban them. This is exactly why you don't put your faith in the federal government and pay more attention to local government. Love 'em or hate 'em, the Republican Party appears to understand this very well. They made state and local government a priority because they know that is where politics begins. Their success at the national level is disproportionate to the size of their voting bloc because they know how to play the game. Anyone who opposes their ideals needs to remember that, and get involved locally.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Your claim was the President has the lowest impact on one’s life. As I showed, it is a reality that the President’s actions have a significant impact on people’s lives, probably bigger than a mayor or state senator or state representative probably has in the recent past. Whether the President should or should not is irrelevant. The salient fact is that if the presidential election results for 2016 were different, then abortion access for millions or tens of millions of women would not be on the chopping block. > Their success at the national level is disproportionate to the size of their voting bloc because they know how to play the game. This is a trivial fact when the game is designed such that certain voting blocs in certain arbitrarily drawn boundaries have more voting power than other same size or bigger voting blocs in other arbitrarily drawn boundaries. Unless you live in a place that can be flipped to your candidate or party, there is not much to do locally.
Buttons840 5y ago
As tossthere put it: "Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?" Can't help but think of this when I start forming an opinion about what Dr. Seuss should do with his old books, etc. All kinds of trivial issue the news and social media prompts me to think about. Why do I care? Especially since I'm not going to do anything about it. There are more important causes to fight for, and I don't have the time to take action for trivial things. If I'm not going to act, and cannot influence the situation, why bother even forming an opinion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940090
freedomben 5y ago
Your dad's broader point is a really good one, but the example of Andrew Cuomo doesn't seem like the best to me depending on when it was said. For a while there Cuomo was being talked about very seriously as the heir apparent to the Democrat presidential nomination. I agree with OP that "civic duty" is a silly reason for watching the news, but when it comes to voting to give people massive amount of power, that really does matter. Now that Cuomo is out, I agree, for those of us not in NY his actions are less consequential.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  maybe but in the end it turned out Cuomo was not going to be a presidential candidate and what happened to him never really mattered at all. I think this can apply to most news. You think a topic is important because it could be important months down the road. I would bet that 95/100 times what we think is going to be important ends up having no real impact on us at all and we would have been better served paying attention to our hobbies or families or friends.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    Great point. That seems to happen far more often that not.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  This falls into a trap of preparing for every possible outcome when you have finite time and attention. If Cuomo runs for president, there will be plenty of time to make an informed opinion then. The trap set by news is implying that something could possibly impact you when it probably wont.
  - freedomben 5y ago
    Indeed, good point. There's no shortage of coverage on presidential candidates long before you enter the ballot box.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
queuebert 5y ago
Since all the local TV stations and newspapers were bought out by conglomerates, they have been ruined. Local TV news is just random crimes and feel-good stories, and the newspapers are stories about restaurant openings and closures and sports. Feels like meaningless dreck to fill the gaps between ads. The Economist remains a good rag, and Wired is surprisingly good, albeit full of ads. But for true, long-form, thoughtful discussions I look to YouTube and podcasts these days.
- WillPostForFood 5y ago
  Since all the local TV stations and newspapers were bought out by conglomerates, they have been ruined. Local TV news is just random crimes and feel-good stories I'm older enough to remember local news before all the stations were bought up, and it was exactly the same. Nonstop horrible garbage. Classic "kid stuck in the well" stories, a local news staple, go back to at least the 1940s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Fiscus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Fiscus
naasking 5y ago
I think Cuomo is maybe a bad example of why you shouldn't care. The Cuomo affair should hold a lot of interest because it was a true test of the health of public institutions. Here is a powerful public official who was lauded by the media for his response to COVID, while simultaneously implementing terrible public health policies in old age homes that led to thousands of deaths, who then fudged his COVID reports to the CDC, and passed legislation that shielded executives that managed old age homes from liability for following those terrible public health policies. Other representatives tried to draw attention to these problems but couldn't get traction because Cuomo was a media darling in how he stood up to Trump. Cuomo's public image was further bolstered by his brother at CNN, and with all this free publicity Andrew signed a multimillion dollar deal to write a book about his career. But his incompetence and fraud wasn't enough to trigger a fall from grace, it took several sexual harassment complaints. So as a health check on your democratic republic, I'd be a little worried given the multiple failures up and down the line: failure of the executive to implement sensible policies and report data accurately, failure of the press to check their claims, provide coverage free of conflicts of interest and otherwise keep them executive branches in line, failure of the justice department to prosecute blatant misconduct.

salt-thrower 5y ago

Personally, I've subscribed to several RSS feeds for local/state news outlets in my area. That helps me stay more in touch with local stuff. Then I just do a quick scan of AP News for international stuff.

damnyankees 5y ago

> "Why do you care what Andrew Cuomo is doing in New York city?" In and of itself, I don't. Unfortunately, the local politicians toe the party line and ape the Big City / Big State politicians, the Cuomos and the Garcettis of the world. Suppose you could paint it at some level as "know thy enemy" (pardon the abrasiveness of the wording) because those states are something of a test bed for what to expect from the local folks, but a year or so down the line whether that's "You must wear a mask and cannot let your child use that swing set," or "policies that demoralize the police and undermine anything resembling a reasonable standard of rule-of-law, or "we must tear down statues of elder statesmen ("divisive", old, racist White men) while erecting statues of individuals that praised and sought to emulate the Haitian revolution and its genocidal outcomes." With that said, I can't stand that all of my local options routinely shove rage-bait National stories in your face. There is no true "local only" coverage.

LordDragonfang 5y ago
- damnyankees 5y ago
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    - damnyankees 5y ago
      - LordDragonfang 5y ago
        You are describing a behavior that is directly in violation of the Hacker News guidelines >Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to. If your comment is so divisive that you think it would get your account deleted, it probably doesn't belong on HN. >Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents. >Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html edit: If nothing else, I'm impressed by the sheer audacity of creating a second throwaway to continue this argument after your first got flagged, and then accusing me of being the flamer.
        hunter21b 5y ago
1270018080 5y ago
Self awareness and the phrase "rage-bait" could do you wonders.
- damnyankees 5y ago
  Frankly, I don't follow. Perhaps of these issues the only one that could be construed as a non-serious issue is the topic of statues. At the same time, I find it rather queer that when I take a stroll through the local park I am confronted with the statue of a man who wanted to kill everyone with my skin tone in a time where we are supposed to be seeking some sort of harmony.
wonderwonder 5y ago
- damnyankees 5y ago
  No, you just have differing politics and beliefs. In my twelve years of browsing HN I've read many comments of that sort. Personally, I tend not to leave a comment unless I feel there is a substantive element to my reply.
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    It has nothing to do with differing opinions, its just ironic that you chastise the media for posting rage baiting articles and then make a post that is pretty much only rage baiting and opinion based.

rootusrootus 5y ago

Exactly. Now the major team sport is who you want for President, even though he arguably has the lowest impact on your life. As long as he doesn't hit The Button. IMO people ought to put down social media, put down the national news, and pick up their local newspaper. Read about their own mayor, city council, whatever. And maybe even get involved -- depending on the size of your city, an ordinary individual can actually get involved at a meaningful level.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
The president has a very significant impact on many people’s lives via judicial nominees. The biggest this year is expected to be the effects of the 3 Republican Supreme Court judges installed by Trump on many women’s access to abortions, but many other judges in the system are appointed by presidents as well that make decisions that affect many people’s lives.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  I think your example just highlights my point. Currently abortion rights are enshrined at the federal level. The SCOTUS is not going to ban abortions. They are going to throw it right back down to the state level. If you lose access to abortions, it is because your local politicians decided to ban them. This is exactly why you don't put your faith in the federal government and pay more attention to local government. Love 'em or hate 'em, the Republican Party appears to understand this very well. They made state and local government a priority because they know that is where politics begins. Their success at the national level is disproportionate to the size of their voting bloc because they know how to play the game. Anyone who opposes their ideals needs to remember that, and get involved locally.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Your claim was the President has the lowest impact on one’s life. As I showed, it is a reality that the President’s actions have a significant impact on people’s lives, probably bigger than a mayor or state senator or state representative probably has in the recent past. Whether the President should or should not is irrelevant. The salient fact is that if the presidential election results for 2016 were different, then abortion access for millions or tens of millions of women would not be on the chopping block. > Their success at the national level is disproportionate to the size of their voting bloc because they know how to play the game. This is a trivial fact when the game is designed such that certain voting blocs in certain arbitrarily drawn boundaries have more voting power than other same size or bigger voting blocs in other arbitrarily drawn boundaries. Unless you live in a place that can be flipped to your candidate or party, there is not much to do locally.

Buttons840 5y ago

As tossthere put it: "Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?" Can't help but think of this when I start forming an opinion about what Dr. Seuss should do with his old books, etc. All kinds of trivial issue the news and social media prompts me to think about. Why do I care? Especially since I'm not going to do anything about it. There are more important causes to fight for, and I don't have the time to take action for trivial things. If I'm not going to act, and cannot influence the situation, why bother even forming an opinion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23940090

freedomben 5y ago

Your dad's broader point is a really good one, but the example of Andrew Cuomo doesn't seem like the best to me depending on when it was said. For a while there Cuomo was being talked about very seriously as the heir apparent to the Democrat presidential nomination. I agree with OP that "civic duty" is a silly reason for watching the news, but when it comes to voting to give people massive amount of power, that really does matter. Now that Cuomo is out, I agree, for those of us not in NY his actions are less consequential.

wonderwonder 5y ago
maybe but in the end it turned out Cuomo was not going to be a presidential candidate and what happened to him never really mattered at all. I think this can apply to most news. You think a topic is important because it could be important months down the road. I would bet that 95/100 times what we think is going to be important ends up having no real impact on us at all and we would have been better served paying attention to our hobbies or families or friends.
- freedomben 5y ago
  Great point. That seems to happen far more often that not.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
This falls into a trap of preparing for every possible outcome when you have finite time and attention. If Cuomo runs for president, there will be plenty of time to make an informed opinion then. The trap set by news is implying that something could possibly impact you when it probably wont.
- freedomben 5y ago
  Indeed, good point. There's no shortage of coverage on presidential candidates long before you enter the ballot box.
systemvoltage 5y ago

queuebert 5y ago

Since all the local TV stations and newspapers were bought out by conglomerates, they have been ruined. Local TV news is just random crimes and feel-good stories, and the newspapers are stories about restaurant openings and closures and sports. Feels like meaningless dreck to fill the gaps between ads. The Economist remains a good rag, and Wired is surprisingly good, albeit full of ads. But for true, long-form, thoughtful discussions I look to YouTube and podcasts these days.

WillPostForFood 5y ago
Since all the local TV stations and newspapers were bought out by conglomerates, they have been ruined. Local TV news is just random crimes and feel-good stories I'm older enough to remember local news before all the stations were bought up, and it was exactly the same. Nonstop horrible garbage. Classic "kid stuck in the well" stories, a local news staple, go back to at least the 1940s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Fiscus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathy_Fiscus

naasking 5y ago

I think Cuomo is maybe a bad example of why you shouldn't care. The Cuomo affair should hold a lot of interest because it was a true test of the health of public institutions. Here is a powerful public official who was lauded by the media for his response to COVID, while simultaneously implementing terrible public health policies in old age homes that led to thousands of deaths, who then fudged his COVID reports to the CDC, and passed legislation that shielded executives that managed old age homes from liability for following those terrible public health policies. Other representatives tried to draw attention to these problems but couldn't get traction because Cuomo was a media darling in how he stood up to Trump. Cuomo's public image was further bolstered by his brother at CNN, and with all this free publicity Andrew signed a multimillion dollar deal to write a book about his career. But his incompetence and fraud wasn't enough to trigger a fall from grace, it took several sexual harassment complaints. So as a health check on your democratic republic, I'd be a little worried given the multiple failures up and down the line: failure of the executive to implement sensible policies and report data accurately, failure of the press to check their claims, provide coverage free of conflicts of interest and otherwise keep them executive branches in line, failure of the justice department to prosecute blatant misconduct.