.First thing in the morning, I go into my den and turn on my computer, the coffee and the cable television. I watch Morning Joe because it's focused on the latest developments and I check Fox to see if they have any interesting guests. That's sort of the background music for my morning.
Then I go online. I usually have a couple hundred e-mails because I get a lot of news that way. I get The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post and I go through their major headlines. I also get Progressive Review by Sam Smith. It's a very good summary of a lot of items from a left perspective, but they are also interesting to our readers. Dick Morris, who writes for us, also sends out a daily e-mail. I also get Google Alerts for anything I think is a hot topic. I'm a big believer that people follow other people, not just ideas, so I have alerts for lots of people.
When I do hit the Internet, I first look at Newsmax to see what we're focusing on. Then I run down the wires from our links page. Yahoo has some of the best selections from the wires and I check out the top of MSNBC for things our readers might be interested in. I also check Fox News, Google News, Drudge Report and Breitbart. I used to write for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, so I check them. I'll then look at international AP stories. The only two international publications I look at every day are The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. I'm fascinated by the Middle East and I always think they give a perspective we're not getting.
I come into the office around nine and we get The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post. We used to get the Financial Times, but stopped because I found its coverage really flat and boring.
I get coffee and turn on Fox again and I run through the papers at the standup desk I have in addition to my regular desk. I love The New York Post, I used to read it and I used to work there and I usually focus on Page 6. What I like about the newspaper is that you can really see the focus the editors are giving. I think that's important for readers. A lot of times when we pick up a story, we'll note that it was a page one, top of the fold story.
After about 30 to 45 minutes, I'll go to work on the business side of the company. I don't really check news sources much during the day time, but I have four TV's in my office showing Fox, CNN, MSNBC, and CNBC. I don't listen to talk radio much and that's a big mainstay for Republican readers, but Rush Limbaugh puts up major issues from his show and I check that out.
If I have a business lunch or I'm off for lunch, I will have an employee drive me and I will take some magazines or publications to read in the car. Forbes is probably my favorite. I read The New Yorker, Christian Science Monitor, The Atlantic, American Spectator, National Review, Time Magazine, Weekly Standard, Vanity Fair and Barron's.
Barron's usually has some interesting perspectives on the financial markets you don't get in The Wall Street Journal and I think it's been one of the secret recipes for Newsmax's success. A lot of sites only focus on what's online, but a lot of magazines publish stuff that doesn't go online. Or historically haven't. I remember a couple years ago, at the news stand I saw that Cigar Aficionado had an interview with Tommy Franks and they asked what will happen to the United States if a nuclear bomb went off. We did a little write-up on that and it got a lot of buzz on talk radio.
I don't track on mobile devices and I don't really use RSS feeds because I think it's too flat and doesn't give a sense of what's important and what isn't. I'm sort of a Luddite when it comes to new technologies. My staff keeps begging me to do more on social media and I've reluctantly agreed. I still don't think the equation is favorable for putting a lot of resources in Facebook, but I think you capture a younger group and it is a way to bond more with readers. But I think it's over-hyped, the value. We now have one staff member dedicated to that and Twitter.
I usually have social things at night that I go to, dinners or meetings. When I get home I check my e-mail once again early. I try to do that before 9:00 and I'm usually in bed by 11:00.