My girlfriend Jill bought me a subscription to TIME magazine for my birthday this year, a very thoughtful gift knowing that I love reading TIME when I get a copy, but tended to go extended periods without picking up an issue. Being that it is primarliy world news and current affairs-based, it makes sense to have the latest issue as soon as it is released.

I grew up vaguely aware that TIME magazine was held to a high standard by adults; TIME's Person of The Year was an award that was frequently mentioned in notices regarding an important figure and various front covers from over the years were often reproduced by other media, also no doubt aware that coverage of TIME, or by TIME, lended their own story validation by proxy.

I first read a TIME magazine properly in a doctor's surgery, where a bunch of well-thumbed copies resided on a waiting room table next to National Geographics and Reader's Digests. TIME had seemd to me to be, firstly, above my level, and secondly, a fairly US-centric volume of articles on either US-based events or with a primarily American worldview. I discovered however, that my level of knowledge of events and issues was not a consideration nor the basis of condescension by the writers and that the majority of articles are neither elitist nor snobbish. TIME is instead a sobering, educated and concerned look at the types if issues that are far more involved than can be summarised on a television news report and often don't even make the sensationalist grade.

I find the letters to the editor section particularly of note as it seems to me as an outsider that most articles are well-balanced with a slight liberal slant. More often than not, there are more than a few readers who take exception to the tone of this article or that article and the views expressed are from as far afield as Saudi Arabia and Reykjavik. There is a global community that cares about issues beyond how many children Angelina and Brad have adopted or whether the couple from the Twilight series are in or out of love. Sometimes, these topics are covered as well, TIME doesn't pretend that popular culture doesn't exist, but the coverage is more evenly balanced. And you're highly unlikely to come across photos of either of the Good Charlotte twins in swimming trunks off the coast of St Tropez.

I had, for a time, shunned the majority of news media as I grew increasingly despondent with the state of world affairs and the view that we may very well be delivering the world to hell in a handbasket as tensions rise with North Korea, as the fighting intensifies in the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and the global economic meltdown seemed to be lining the pockets of some very wealthy CEO's who had done quite well out of the whole debacle thank you very much. Shunning the media didn't make me any happier, just less informed.

What I had to do, in fact, was work harder to find where I would take my news and current affairs information from and finding a magazine that for the most part seems to share my views on 'what really matters', how it should be reported and probably most importantly, that the heroes and villains that are shaping our world today are far more complex than is often portrayed.