Read the news. Guard your attention.

Start with a doubt

Is the news free? Most of it, yes. You pay nothing to scroll, watch a video or read a headline. So who pays the reporters, the editors, the camera crews, the servers? Somebody does. And if you are not paying with money, what are you paying with?

With your attention. Every minute you spend on a screen is a minute someone has earned, and many of them sell that minute to advertisers. That is the first idea of this course: your attention is valuable, so other people compete for it. Knowing how they compete is how you keep some of it for yourself.

What do you think already?

Three quick questions before we begin. There is no score, and nothing leaves this page. At the end of the course you will see your first answers next to what you know by then.

How this course works

Four parts and 23 chapters, then a wrap-up, about 11 hours, at your own pace. Each chapter has:

• a story, something to try and a question to argue about,
• an "In short" box at the top, so you can see the main points first,
• a link into World 101, Learnacy's map of what the world knows,
• a note for your notebook, and
• a five-question check. Pass it with 4 right, as often as you need.

Pass every check and the final round, and you get a certificate of completion with a link anyone can use to verify it.

One rule for the whole course: questions are more important than answers. That is doubly true for media. The habit of asking "who made this, and why?" is worth more than any single fact you learn here.

Explore in World 101

Start on the map now. Open Social Media and Society in World 101 and follow one link that surprises you. Then ask of what you read: who made this, and why?

From a street to your screen

It is a Tuesday morning. A water pipe bursts on a busy road, a school wins a science prize, a minister gives a speech, and a famous actor posts a photo. By evening, which of these is on the news?

Did anyone decide? Yes, many people. A reporter heard about the pipe from a reader's call. An editor chose the speech for the front page. Another chose the actor's photo because it would be read most. Nothing reaches you as "the news" without people choosing it, at every step.

The path of a story

Follow one story. A reporter finds it, from a press release, a phone call, a court record or their own eyes. They check it with sources: people who saw it, documents, officials. An editor decides whether it runs, how long it is and where it goes. Someone writes the headline, which most readers will see without reading the story. All of this happens against a deadline.

Why does the deadline matter? Because checking takes time, and the pressure to be first can beat the pressure to be right. That is where many errors come from.

What makes something news?

Editors call it news value. A story is more likely to run if it is:

• new: it happened today, not last year;
• close: it happened near the readers;
• about conflict: a fight, a protest, a court case;
• about someone well known;
• unusual: a man bites a dog, not a dog bites a man;
• affecting many people: a price rise, a new rule, a storm.

Notice what is missing from the list: "important but slow". Rising groundwater levels, a slow improvement in schooling, a law working quietly. Slow stories often matter more than fast ones, and they are easy to miss.

Would it be news?

Six things that happened today, in a made-up city. Decide for each: would an editor run it?

India's newsrooms

India has a very large news industry, and it works in many languages. On 31 December 2024 there were 1,54,362 periodicals, which means newspapers and magazines, registered with the Press Registrar General of India, according to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Being registered is not the same as still publishing, and many of those titles had stopped. The press registrar's own report for 2023-24 counted 58,603 periodicals registered in Hindi, more than in any other language, and 20,204 in English. Most of the news a family in India reads is not in English.

Not everything that looks like news is news. A report tells you what happened. An opinion or editorial tells you what the writer thinks about it. An advertisement is paid for by someone who wants to sell you something, even when it is made to look like a report. A careful reader asks first: which of these am I reading?

Should news follow what readers click on?

Editors can now see, minute by minute, which stories people read. Should that decide what goes first?

A hard case. A local paper that cannot survive without clicks. Is it better to run what readers want and stay open, or to run what matters and risk closing?

Explore in World 101

Every news story passes through many hands before it reaches you. Open News, Journalism and Verification in World 101 and follow one link that surprises you.