Perhaps that’s the first thing to be noticed from Time’s recent award to all of us as “Media Person of the Year.” We’re all becoming more egocentric in our supposed desire to diversify news sources and learn from everybody.

This is the argument made by Brian Williams, NBC anchor and managing editor, who worries that this democratization of media isn’t in fact drowning democracy.

“It is now possible — even common — to go about your day in America and consume only what you wish to see and hear. There are television networks that already agree with your views, iPods that play only music you already know you like, Internet programs ready to filter out all but the news you want to hear.”

So what’s the point of news when it’s not news, just things you want to hear? Print newspapers, one of the last remnants of collective information, are suffering from the ego craze.

“Millions of Americans have come to regard the act of reading a daily newspaper— on paper — as something akin to being dragged by their parents to Colonial Williamsburg,” said Williams.

So just remember that all these personal and customized sources may be helpful, but don’t let them make you “miss the next great book or the next great idea…because we are too busy celebrating ourselves.”

Source: Time magazine