Meet Blair Reeves. He lives in Durham, NC and works at a cloud commerce company. He blogs, enjoys barbecue and used to work in global health. In his words, “I try to combine the best parts of rural Southerner and urban West Coast techy person into one, with a little more humor and less presumption.” Definitely my type of person, particularly with his proclivity for sweet tea.
I asked Blair some questions about how he takes his news. If you’d like to read the others in the series, please click here, and if you want to take part, just let me know.
1. How do you get your news?
Mostly the NYT online (I have a subscription), Twitter, sometimes the NPR app. I also read The Atlantic in hardcopy (also subscribed) on planes. Sometimes read Vox/Quartz, but infrequently.
2. Please send me a gif or video or poem that captures your attention span.
3. How do you take your coffee?
Strong and rich.
4. Who’s doing it right in news?
The Atlantic, Madrigal, Ezra Klein, BuzzFeed, Vox, probably NPR in their own way
5. What’s the first news event that you remember?
Challenger disaster (sort of)
6. What was the best thing that happened to you this week?
Terrific holiday party with close friends last weekend. Got to meet some new ones at some random person’s Hannukah party last night too.
7. What do you absolutely hate about the news?
The lack of perspective and sensationalism. The ones who do this most (ex. Fox, MSNBC, CNN) aren’t really “news” any more so much as info-tainment, and I ignore them all. (Besides, I don’t have cable.)
It also depends what you call “news.” I follow a lot of tech industry and e-commerce tech “news” which is very specialized, and for that I follow specific blogs/websites.
8. What’s the best podcast to listen to while doing chores?
I really dig the a16z podcast. Been listening to Ben Thompson (Exponent) and Neil Cybart (Above Avalon) podcasts too, but infrequently. I mostly just listen to podcasts while running.
9. How do you get your news when you travel?
NPR news app! And twitter.