... And why I love Google Reader

Did you know that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a blog? Image: The Sun Online

Ever since we learned about the nifty online tool that is Google Reader I have been privy to a completely different set of current events...

I had no idea, for example, that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a blog of his personal memos where he sends "Merry Christmas" messages to Americans... although what might be even more interesting are the comments from international readers, which either sing his praises or are stingingly venomous.

I also had no idea just how much news stories written about the same event could differ so much... just a quick scan of news articles published in Iran, Egypt, Israel and the USA about the same subject and one could mistakenly think that they were reading about four different events. This is something which I found quite interesting and further looked at for my article on Arab/Israeli news coverage of the recent settler dispute.

I must admit however, that the main thing I like about Google reader (and which makes me rely on it heavily) is that I can personalise it so that all the news on the topics I'm interested in is neatly gathered in one place. So when I'm writing articles for my Wordpress blog I can quickly flick through and find news stories that haven't received much coverage, which I can then further expand upon.

Because, to be honest, why would anyone read my blog (or anyone else's for that matter) if they could read about the same stories in the mainstream press?