Editor’s note: Today, being a news junkie requires not just the ability to keep up with hundreds of breaking stories a day, but the ability to redistribute those stories to your followers and news sites. To get some insight into the modern news junkie, we asked Mrinal Desai to share with us how he screens the news in the guest post below. Desai is the co-founder of CrossLoop, but some of you may recognize him more from Twitter or Techmeme, where he tips stories every day—580 of those tips have appeared as headlines since the beginning of this year. You can read his last guest post here.

Like many out there, I have been, am and always will be a news addict. For many news junkies, it is the fleeting, current fix of information about a breaking topic that interests them, only to be replaced by the next headline. They jump from headline to headline, forgetting the one they just read as they move on to the next one.

For me personally, news is not only timely information on the current state of affairs but also a way to take a deep dive, to connect analysis and information together and learn through application.  I am looking for insight.  It could be patterns, it could be knowledge about an industry or it could be an opportunity to become introspective and ask questions.

Keeping this in mind, here is a snapshot of my consumption and distribution of news both offline and online.  I’ll divide the way I screen the news by the screens on which it comes to me.

No Screen:

• I don’t start a day without reading The Wall Street Journal in print
• Currently, I get 4 magazines and I go through them on the weekend: The Economist, The Atlantic, Wired and Fortune. Before they stopped, I used to also get Business 2.0 and MIT’s Technology Review.

Screen 1 – MacBook Pro:

Apps: Twitter, Google Reader, Techmeme and a little bit of Facebook

Twitter: I’ve been a user since January 2007.  Its always on for me. I invest a significant amount of time in figuring out who/what to follow based on my interests.  Today this ‘list’ stands at 489. Building this list is a continuous process and it typically consists of people who can teach or inform me of something, news sources and people I respect and with whom I want to build a long term relationship with independent of business. Of this, I have a column/list/group called “Pigeons” (birdie, early days of communication—you get it, right?).  I read each and every tweet of this group. I have about 75 in this group. 15 of my personal favorites, apart from @techcrunch and all those who write for it @techcrunch/team, are:

@bxchen – Technology Reporter, Wired
@148apps – iPhone App Reviews
@msuster – General Partner, GRP Partners
@jennydeluxe – Technology Reporter, The New York Times
@scobleizer – everything social media
@Learmonth – Reporter at Adage
@jasonhiner – Executive Editor at TechRepublic (CBS Interactive)
@leplaporte – Technology Journalist and Broadcaster
@appadvice – Editor, Webware (CBS Interactive)
@taylorbuley – Technology Reporter, Forbes
@sarahintampa – Writer, ReadWriteWeb
@reckless – Nilay Patel, Engadget
@gizmodo – Everything gadgets blog
@dmac1 – Technology reporter, Business Week
@joshk – General Partner, First Round Capital

You can follow them all in one click on the Twitter List I created called “Fifteen”

Screen 2 – iPhone: I have played with a few iPhone news apps, both paid and free.  These include the mobile apps from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times , Byline, Fluent News, News Fuse, BBCReader, NPR News, ReadItLater, ZenNews, and News Pro. I also visit mobile news sites. Being a little glued to Techmeme, I was very excited to see its new mobile version for smartphones—the icon took a spot right away on my home screen:

After experimenting and trying them all out, though, my current favorite native iPhone app is Newsstand (iTunes Link) which stays on my dock. Its a $4.99 app but it does the following extremely well for me:

1. Synchs beautifully with Google Reader and is fast.  It allows me to organize my folders, move them up and down and importantly very easily “Mark all as Read”

Below is a snapshot of my Feeds and a folder creatively named ‘Top News” that I keep a close watch on every day.

2) Newsstand has a lot of social goodness to share through Twitter, Delicious, ReadItLater and Instapaper

What’s Missing:
—bit.ly so that I can track data on the links I share as I do on Tweetie 2 with my API key.
—Sharing on Facebook
—Ability to RT or @respond to my twitter stream that I subscribe to as an RSS feed from within Google Reader.

Before social media, I always shared news via email to specific people. Now I have replaced email with these easy tools:
—Twitthat bookmarklet. One click.
—Twitterbar a Firefox Add-on customized with a prefix. One click.

—Google Reader’s Share is connected to my Twitter account. One click.
—Facebook Share bookmarklet or if I want it all on one place, I recommend Shareaholic.

Screen 3 – TV. I do not get my news here since I watch very little TV.

Screen 4 – eReader
I have a Kindle that I use to read books and have not switched from print to this one yet for news. As you can imagine, I get enough news on my other screens all day and like some time away from it.

Below is a visual of how I personally share news and the tools I use. Everything goes through Twitterfeed as my central hub for news going in and out.  Note that lately I stand undecided between Seesmic and Tweetdeck. (Image courtesy: Zurb, click to enlarge).

I spend a significant amount of money on news—4 print magazines, 2 newspapers with one online and iPhone apps.

The only screen I care about:

• well written analysis
• Unique and timely content/information
• Thought provoking story telling
• “Connection” with the writer—literally or figuratively from a style perspective
• Delivery channel. Find me—the “paperboy route” has changed

How do you screen the news?

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Tomorrow’s Real Time CrunchUp in San Francisco is going to be a blast. It’s an all day event absolutely filled with the thought and business leaders in the space, as well as a whole slew of newcomers launching new startups.

And we’re starting off with a bang. Twitter COO Dick Costolo is on stage first for thirty minutes of cold war style interrogation by Steve Gillmor and me.

And we want your help.

Let us know in the comments what questions you’d like us to ask. We can’t promise that Costolo will answer those questions, but we can guarantee that we’ll ask them. And if your proposed questions are good enough, you can get into the event. We’ll give up to five passes (the last seats in the house) to anyone with deeply insightful ideas. Just make sure to use your real email.

Don’t limit yourself to Twitter-related stuff, either. If Twitter is willing to give advice to Rupert Murdoch on how to run his newspapers, then absolutely anything goes.

I’m looking forward to meeting everyone tomorrow in person, if not at the event then at the party afterwards. See you there.

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I’d probably feel slightly smug, if I didn’t feel so sick.

Smug that after two weeks of me suggesting that social media might not be an unequivocally Good Thing in terms of privacy and human decency, the news has delivered the perfect example to support my view.

Unfortunately it’s hard to feel smug – hard to feel anything but sadness and nausea – when thirteen innocent people are dead.

I’m talking, of course, about Thursday’s Fort Hood shootings. Better informed and more sensitive commentators than I have written about the massacre itself and what it means for the US army, and in particular for the thousands of Muslim soldiers currently fighting – and dying – for this country. How do you even begin to process the idea of an American soldier shouting the takbir, before mowing down his comrades in arms? On American soil? At the home base of the Combat Warrior Stress Reset program? Yes, that’s definitely one for the experts to parse.

And yet, the first news and analysis out of the base didn’t come from the experts. Nor did it come from the 24-hour news media, or even from dedicated military blogs – but rather from the Twitter account of one Tearah Moore, a soldier from Linden, Michigan who is based at Fort Hood, having recently returned from Iraq.

When Major Nidal Malik Hasan began his killing spree, commanders immediately put the base into lock-down in accordance with military procedure. Movements in and out were severely restricted, as was the flow of information to the news media. Official statements from army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Robert Cone were the only way for reporters to find out what was happening, while other base personnel focused on treating the wounded, and ensuring the threat had been dealt with. Or at least that’s what the commanders thought was happening. In reality Ms Moore’s was tweeting minute-by-minute reports from inside the hospital where the wounded were being taken for treatment.

Reports like (in no particular order)…

[T]hey just brought a CART full of boxes w/transplant parts in them. Not good not good. #fthood

Ok we just saw a soldier on a stretcher w/2 armed guards walking by He didnt look like he was in great condition.

Maj Malik A Hassan. He shouldn’t have died. He should be in the worst suffering of his life. It’s too fair for him to just die. Bastard!

A FUCKING MAJOR? Are you kidding me? A MAJ! For those of ut hat don’t know, Army MAJ have pretty serious rank. Dick

Someone just started shooting in Commanche 4 which is on post housing. What are these people thinking?!?

The poor guy that got shot in the balls http://twitpic.com/oejh5

That last twitpic link was particularly amazing: it showed a cameraphone image – of a wounded soldier arriving at the hospital on a gurney – taken by Moore from inside the hospital. Unsurprisingly, Moore’s – coverage was quickly picked up by bloggers and mainstream media outlets alike, something that she actively encouraged by tweeting to friends that they should pass her phone number to the press so she could tell them the truth, rather than the speculative bullshit that was hitting the wires.

There was just one problem: Moore’s information was bullshit too.

As we now know, Major Hassan was not killed, but rather captured alive. Reports of a second – or third – shooter also now appear to be inaccurate. Whether someone was shot “in the balls” hasn’t been publicly confirmed and, for the sake the of the victim’s privacy, let’s hope it never is – but the point is that many of Moore’s eye-witness reports weren’t worth the bits they were written on. They had no value whatsoever, except as entertainment and tragi-porn.

Two weeks ago, I wrote here about how the ‘real time web’ is turning all of us into inhuman egotists. How we’re increasingly seeing people at the scenes of major accidents grabbing their cellphones to capture the dramatic events and share them with their friends, rather than calling 911. Last week I went even further with my doom-mongering, suggesting that the trend of adding people’s homes to Foursquare without permission was indicative of a generation that prioritised their own fun over the privacy of their friends.

In the actions of Tearah Moore at Fort Hood, we have the perfect example of both kinds of selfishness.

There surely can’t be a human being left in the civilised world who doesn’t know that cellphones should be switched off in hospitals, and yet not only did Moore leave hers on but she actually used it to photograph patients, and broadcast the images to the world. Just think about that for a second. Rather than offering to help the wounded, or getting the hell out of the way of those trying to do their jobs, Moore actually pointed a cell-phone at a wounded soldier, uploaded it to twitpic and added a caption saying that the victim “got shot in the balls”.

Her behaviour had nothing to do with getting the word out; it wasn’t about preventing harm to others, but rather a simple case of – as I said two weeks ago – “look at me looking at this.” (I don’t know about you, but if I spotted someone taking a picture of one of my friends or relatives in a hospital then they would probably need a hospital bed of their own. “Tell me, Ms Moore, exactly how did the iPhone end up in your lower intestine?”)

Perhaps fittingly, I posted some of these thoughts on Twitter yesterday, as events were still unfolding. Many people agreed with me – replying with links to the specific military codes that cover what information solidiers can share, and the HIPAA which deals with patient privacy. But plenty of others felt that by criticising Moore I was advocating censorship.

As one reply put it, sarcastically: “Yes indeed, let’s moderate twitter and vet all tweets…” Others pointed out that it was just this kind of photography and ‘citizen journalism’ that ensured that the truth got out during the Iranian elections. What about the global outrage at seeing the famous YouTube video of Neda Agha Soltan, shown dying after being shot by (alledgedly) pro-government agents?

Yes – what of it?

For all of our talk about “the world watching”, what good did social media actually do for the people of Iran? Did the footage out of the country actually change the outcome of the elections? No. Despite a slew of YouTube videos and a couple of thousand foreign Twitter users turning their avatar green and pretending to be in Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is still in power. It’s astonishing, really. Despite how successful ten million actual voters marching through Washington, London and other major cities in 2003 were in stopping the invasion of Iraq, a bit of entirely virtual cyber-posturing by foreigners didn’t lead to real change in Iran.

And so it was at Fort Hood. For all the sound and fury, citizen journalism once again did nothing but spread misinformation at a time when thousands people with family at the base would have been freaking out already, and breach the privacy of those who had been killed or wounded. We learned not a single new fact, nor was a single life saved.

What’s most alarming about Moore’s behaviour is that she probably thought she was doing the right thing. Certainly, looking at her MySpace page and her Twitter account (before the army finally forced her to lock it down) we see the portrait of a patriot. Someone who clearly cares a great deal about others, and who – despite the rhetorical question “remind me why I joined the army again” on her profile – is proud to serve her country. In tweeting from the scene, and calling out the media for not reporting the rumours from inside the base, I’m sure she genuinely believed she was helping get the real truth out, and making an actual difference.

And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.

As I’ve already said – and I’m even starting to bore myself now – the answer isn’t censorship (which won’t work), but rather in our social evolution catching up with the state of technology. We need to get back to a point as a society where – without thinking – we put our humanity before our ego. With that in mind, and in the hope of hurrying the process along slightly, I’m going to draw these three nay-saying columns to a close, not with yet another appeal to the better nature of social media addicts but rather with two videos that everyone should watch.

The first is a clip from This American Life which I stumbled across on the blog of the comedy writer, Graham Linehan (Father Ted, The IT Crowd). It’s a thing of beauty. And absolutely terrifying. Just watch it.

The second video is much less heartwarming, but far more terrifying – because it’s entirely real. So real in fact, that I don’t want to embed it here. I want you to make a conscious decision to click through and watch it. It’s the video of the final moments of Neda Agha Soltan’s life.

Even if you’ve seen the footage before, you should watch it again. But this time bear in mind the following: the cameraman was not a professional reporter, but rather an ordinary person, just like the victim. And what did he do when he saw a young girl bleeding to death? Did he run for help, or try to assist in stemming the bleeding? No he didn’t.

Instead he pointed his camera at her and recorded her suffering, moving in closer to her face for her agonising final seconds. For all of our talk of citizen journalism, and getting the truth out, the last thing that terrified girl saw before she closed her eyes for the final time was some guy pointing a cameraphone at her. “Look at me, looking at her, looking back at me.”

Here’s the link.

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If you’re a Twitter freak and think that a dedicated Twitter device is just the thing for you, read on.

This week we saw the launch of the TwitterPeek, a cute little device built by Peek that will do just about anything you want it to do, as long as all you want it to do is access Twitter. It won’t surf the web. It won’t make phone calls. It won’t support third party apps. But it most certainly does run Twitter.

You can get it in black. Or, if you want to show a little flair, you can get in in cyan.

For some crazy reason I wanted one. A friend bought me one that I will truly love forever(ish). But the company also sent me one. And while I may or may not need one TwitterPeek, I almost certainly don’t need two TwitterPeeks.

This is where you come in.

We’re giving one of these away to a TechCrunch reader. It’s the cool one, cyan, with lifetime service that costs $200. And it’s all yours. Just retweet this post and make sure to include the short URL link as well as the #crunch hashtag. Tomorrow we’ll sort through all of the tweets and pick one randomly for the win. You’ll get the TweetPeek device in the mail, and we’ll throw in a TechCrunch tshirt. Even the postage is on us. But please note that in this case only U.S. readers are eligible, because the device only works in the U.S.

By the way, if this goes well and everyone doesn’t spazz out, we’ll do a giveaway every week. Next week we’ll give away a Droid if we can talk Motorola, Verizon or Google to pay for it. If you are a company that has a cool device befitting the refined tastes of a TechCrunch reader (as defined by us) and want to supply the goods, let us know in the comments or via tips@techcrunch.

Oh. And on an unrelated note, it’s unlikely we’ll be returning this test unit, Peek. Something, err, happened to it. I mean we lost it. Actually, it never arrived.

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