While other kids were watching cartoons, I fell in love with Matt Lauer.

When I was younger, I would watch the Today Show every morning before school started—elementary school, that is. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been a huge fan of the show. Matt Lauer was probably one of first crushes besides Brian, the boy who sat next to me in my kindergarten class. But Matt Lauer's dashing looks and Al Roker’s witty banter weren’t the only reasons I enjoyed watching the show. Even though I was a kid and couldn’t exactly understand the stories I was hearing, I genuinely enjoyed watching the news. If I can remember correctly, it just felt really awesome following the news like a grown-up. I had no grasp on politics, or the economy, or even why there were so many bad people out there, but knowing what was going on in the world made my little 3^rd-grade self feel pretty spectacular. The first big stories I remember ever “following” were the Elian Gonzalez case, 9/11, and the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping. So, I guess that’s where it all started.

Up through high school, I religiously watched the news before school every morning. As school began starting earlier and earlier, I would see less of the Today Show, and more of my town’s local news program (Lee Nelson and Sharon Rose, my favorite local news anchors, FTW). When I came to UNH, I stopped watching the news every morning; it was probably because I had no reason to be getting up that early being the sleep-deprived college student that I am. I did develop a habit of checking CNN.com every day, though. It caught a lot of my friends off-guard. They would look over at me on my laptop and ask, “Kate… are you reading the news?” Hell yes, I am. I guess what it comes down to is that I really like being informed, or at least trying to be. Let’s face it: in my everyday life, I’m discombobulated, I’m unaware of my general surroundings, I can’t manage to wake up on time, I easily lose my belongings, and I’m basically a mess. If I can manage to know what’s going on in the world, then at least there is some sort of stability and organization in my life.

I don’t really know why my friends were so surprised that I surfed CNN for fun, but I feel like it might be because people my age or younger don’t really pay attention to the news anymore. I think that there are a couple reasons for that. For one, I think we’ve become desensitized in a way to the things that are happening around us. A lot of the time, the news is depressing: murders, recessions, career-ruining scandals, riots, injustices, etc. I honestly believe that once you start hearing stories like these over and over again, you stop listening because you realize that these stories are going to keep happening. To get people to start listening, we have to hear these stories in a way we’ve never heard them before, from a new perspective or angle. I think if news stories catered more towards the audience of young adults, they’d be more likely to pay attention. I think this also relates to the idea that people my age don’t pay as much attention is because we’re under the impression that we don’t relate to these stories. It’s possible that a lot of people think that if a story doesn’t affect us directly, or it doesn’t involve our interests, then there’s little point in reading it. I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but it definitely could account for my generation’s decline in interest.

What does this mean for the future of journalism? I think it could mean a couple things. I feel like my generation of journalists is less likely to go down the road of writing for a general paper, and is more likely to write stories for specialized blogs or magazine. There’s a wide range of online publications that cover any specific topic, and it’s become so easy to find a place where you can write about exactly what matters to you. I absolutely believe that there are those who will stick with reporting the news in general, but I think a lot of us are going to end up finding our niches and writing on those.

Personally, my relationship with the news is going pretty strong; it’s been a long time since we first met, but it always finds ways to excite me. I guess you could call it love.