The Shallowing of America (Myself Included)

Full disclosure: I get my "news" from the Daily Show.

As the daily news across America is losing relevance, advertising revenue is dropping and newspaper closings are accelerating, I can't help but hope that my New York Times, delivered to my door every Sunday, remains viable. So what if I only read the "Style" section? (Sad but true. And somewhat ironic given what I'm wearing right now . . . )

In a world more focused on sound bytes, I find it interesting that Ashton Kutcher has over 3 million followers on Twitter compared to CNN at over 2.5 million. That's 500K more people, larger than the population of the greater Rochester metropolitan area, that would rather tune in to read a line item about Ashton playing skee-ball with Jimmy Fallon than view boring news updates such as "police search pharmacy in Michael Jackson probe." (As an aside, Son #2 and I played skee-ball just last week. It's my favorite arcade game. And Son #2 is just as cute and funny as Jimmy Fallon. Well, close. Pretty sure I can kick both their butts.)

At 2 million followers, even our nation's favorite mogul, Oprah, has a smaller Twitter audience than Ashton.

So what gives? What is it about this dude that makes over 3M people want to tune into his life every moment of the day? Inquiring minds wanna know. (But not enough to follow him.)