The Dartmouth bubble is perhaps never more apparent than when I receive a text from my mom asking my thoughts on an article or news story that I have missed entirely. In an attempt to stay well-informed — especially given that I write a regular opinion column — I find it my responsibility to stay caught up with current events. Staying informed, however, becomes difficult when midterms combine with application deadlines, research and campus jobs. It seems wrong to place the ins and outs of my individual life over international news, but hey, sometimes it happens. Luckily, though, there seems to be a solution for people who become embarrassed when they eventually miss a news story — theSkimm.
I have had countless friends recommend theSkimm to me. At first, it seems like an entirely benign concept. Each morning, Skimm subscribers receive a newsletter in their inbox detailing the previous day’s news. When someone mentions the war against the Islamic State in passing conversation, Skimm readers will not be uninformed, having read a few paragraphs on the topic that morning. TheSkimm provides a valuable timesaving service — selecting and condensing stories from across the web — for free. As one of its founders, Danielle Weisberg, said during an interview on NBC, “TheSkimm is all about making it easier to be smarter.” It’s no surprise that many Dartmouth students — and over a million people in total — are subscribed.
Let’s think about that statement more, though — “making it easier to be smarter.” Weisberg equates being intelligent with being informed, which is not necessarily the case. She assumes that the information theSkimm selects to circulate is, in fact, the only information a reader needs to stay topical on the day’s important news. The newsletter’s website echoes this sentiment, claiming that theSkimm “gives you everything you need to start your day.” This might be true, if all you needed to start your day were some easy-to-digest blurbs.
Forbes praised the brevity of Skimm emails in an article calling them “Your New Secret Weapon,” saying their length “keep[s] information (and word count) in check.” Maybe I’m a traditionalist, but this seems like a total perversion of the news. The more information someone learns about a topic, the more capable they are of forming a nuanced opinion. When someone reads theSkimm as a sole news source, they receive a severely limited selection of stories, each already imbued with the opinions of Skimm writers — the “fresh editorial content” they advertise on their homepage. Reading the news in such a way is entirely antithetical to critical thinking, placing value in appearing well informed while sacrificing deeper understanding and exploration.
Moreover, Skimm writers decide for the newsletter’s readers which stories are important. Even before being condensed into sassy newsletter form, the mainstream media already curates the stories that reach readers and listeners, lending an implicit bias to the most-covered stories. TheSkimm further curates these stories, reducing the breadth and depth of its readers’ knowledge.
More than most other news sources, theSkimm creates its newsletter with a very specific audience in mind. Its logo — a slim female wearing pearls and heels — reveals that audience. Weisberg labels the newsletter’s target subscribers as “female millennials.” So, theSkimm informs its readers on topics that it believes affluent, young and educated women would find important. This type of narrow targeting does not do the world’s news justice — but I should not expect much from a news source that Instagrammed a photo reading, “It’s no coincidence that wine is win with an e on the end.”
I applaud theSkimm’s founders, Weisberg and Carly Zakin, on their innovation. They have clearly created a marketable product, as demonstrated by the many influential sponsors, including NBC and ABC. The goal of making it easier for people to get informed, especially with the glut of information available online and in print, is admirable. TheSkimm, however, falls short of this goal, focusing on quick stories selected for a narrow and non-representative demographic. While I continue to miss major events each week, I have firmly decided that it would not be worth it to subscribe to theSkimm. Luckily, I have the weekends and the periodicals for catching up.
