I thought this was going to be a post about how reading news sites is a waste of time.
That said, I'm not sure this is the best viewpoint to have. It fails when everyone holds this viewpoint, because if everyone expects the news to find him, there will be no news. Someone has to actually be out there seeing what is going on and reporting on it.
Another problem is that if you've ever played telephone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers), you know how information can get distorted as it gets passed along. A non-trivial issue I've seen in this US election is that non-news-seeking individuals hear from someone that Obama is Muslim (never mind that they also have incorrect notions of what being a Muslim means based on various pieces of "information" that has "found them"), and that affects their decision (note that I'm not actually an Obama supporter).
In other words, I think the post promotes something that may turn out to be a dangerous practice which could eventually result in an echo chamber of news which fails to reflect many of the things that are actually happening. It takes true investigative reporting to uncover real conspiracies and dangerous secrets. Would anyone who believes, "If the news is that important, it will find me," be willing to do that?
I wouldn't call your first point a problem. There are plenty of voracious newshounds out there that are collectively scraping all available news sites clean and originating these link posts and chain emails. That's why the phenomenon exists.
As for the echo chamber, this problem is nothing new. Traditional media copy ideas from each other with less self-examination than the blogosphere, which is unabashedly divided into two camps carefully scrutinizing each other for any inaccuracy to pounce on, and they (Reuters and AP especially) frequently screw up stories that are outside the core competencies of the vast majority of journalists, like science.
It's the responsibility of Obama and his supporters to dispel misconceptions about him, as it ever was, and I'm sure he and they know full well how to do it.
I wish, but in reality, I don't know many people with the same interests as me. I am sure that if anything important to anyone would happen, I would probably learn about it (like World War 3 starting or something), but other than that?
Example off the top of my head: I don't think anybody I know would have told me about the Netflix Challenge yet.
Toying around with it - certainly not expecting to win any money. Sure, "need" can be defined in all sorts of ways, not only with respect to news. Perhaps it would be most efficient to live like a reclusive monk?
Well, I found that I was spending hours a day on reddit, slashdot, and N.YC before I realized that most of the "news" I was getting had no direct or indirect impact on my life. Now, I mostly just read the headlines on the other sites. This is the only one that I often read articles on, much less comment about.
It was a huge time sink for me to be concerned about things that don't matter. :)
That said, I'm not sure this is the best viewpoint to have. It fails when everyone holds this viewpoint, because if everyone expects the news to find him, there will be no news. Someone has to actually be out there seeing what is going on and reporting on it.
Another problem is that if you've ever played telephone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers), you know how information can get distorted as it gets passed along. A non-trivial issue I've seen in this US election is that non-news-seeking individuals hear from someone that Obama is Muslim (never mind that they also have incorrect notions of what being a Muslim means based on various pieces of "information" that has "found them"), and that affects their decision (note that I'm not actually an Obama supporter).
In other words, I think the post promotes something that may turn out to be a dangerous practice which could eventually result in an echo chamber of news which fails to reflect many of the things that are actually happening. It takes true investigative reporting to uncover real conspiracies and dangerous secrets. Would anyone who believes, "If the news is that important, it will find me," be willing to do that?