8 ms·

The Wall St. Journal is the single highest quality news source I'm aware of.

tptacek 10y ago
I'd have a tough time deciding between the NYT and WSJ next, especially since the editorial/opinion section of the WaPo is the least valuable to me (informed opinion is something you can get everywhere on the Internet for free). (WaPo vs. NYT was basically a coinflip decision for me, but doing WaPo and then NYT would probably create a pretty significant overlap, and WSJ wouldn't. On the other hand, the NYT is a substantially better site than WSJ).
- griffordson 10y ago
  WSJ + WaPo is great IMO. My morning routine is WSJ, FT, WaPo, and sometimes NYT. The NYT is my least favored source partly because they skew too heavily toward my biases and I prefer reading high quality news from alternative perspectives more. YMMV.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I'd suggest the FT as among the highest quality papers. Or a good monthly. One axis of quality measures here, using the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers list: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...
appleiigs 10y ago
It's good for American news. For a wider angle and a good website and app, Financial Times is great.
dmix 10y ago
I've found WSJ to be a very good paper, especially for geopolitics and finance. NYT and WaPo's political slant is almost becoming unreadable for someone who's moderate and disinterested in either US party. I can't speak for WaPo but I've been reading NYT for a decade now and their total abandonment of any attempt at political neutrality was disheartening this past year. My only problem with WSJ is it's very expensive compared to NYT. About 3-4x as expensive as a Canadian. So I've been using WaPo recently, they're slightly better than NYT but only slightly. Probably going to go full WSJ soon.
rsync 10y ago
"The Wall St. Journal is the single highest quality news source I'm aware of." I prefer the NYT and think the reporting is better and broader - especially with regard to the fluffier sections like Sunday Styles, the Magazine, the Book Review and so on ... if I had to pick a single news source I think the A section of NYT would be my choice. However, I have to say that I enjoy reading the Financial Times more because of their practice of condensing a story into a single page without a fold and without a jump to another page. They explore the story in more depth deeper in the paper, but you can read the front page headline column from start to finish without unfolding and page turning. Also, the NYT has this habit of vastly over-backgrounding quotes ... a ten word quote will have 2-3 inches of comma-delimited background and qualifications and it just breaks the story and is hard to read.
hedora 10y ago
They dropped in quality sharply when Murdoch acquired them, and fired a big chunk of the team. Then they started focusing on offensive conservative propaganda on their editorial page. At that point I stopped reading or paying attention to them. Frankly, I welcome the news about the paywall since it will mean I see fewer links to their "journalism". Has something changed in the last few years? Did they somehow turn things around? [edit: Just wanted to point out that the events I'm referring to were about a decade ago. Concretely, before the acquisition, it seemed like the WSJ was driving something like 50% of the daily news cycle with a difficult to discern bias. Upper management intentionally destroyed that, at least from an outsider perspective. Reading the other comments and stories about the whole fake news phenomenon makes me think no one has managed to replicate the function they used to serve.]
- tptacek 10y ago
  The WSJ editorial page was famously a conservative bastion long before Murdoch bought them. But this conversation is a rat-hole. We can generate 1000 comments about any major newspaper. I think my point was just: pick one and subscribe to it.
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  Their opinion pages have always been filled with grade A crazies and that does actually seem to have gotten worse, but their reporting is still good. This was one I read recently that actually made a good job of covering the real story in detail: http://blogs.wsj.com/indonesiarealtime/2013/08/26/the-strike-that-rattled-singapore-a-wsj-investigation/ http://blogs.wsj.com/indonesiarealtime/2013/08/26/the-strike...
friedman23 10y ago
The economist is the only other news source that I know of that is on par.
- DashRattlesnake 10y ago
  I've heard that it's reporters are actually quite young and inexperienced, but the editorial anonymity masks that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonymity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonym...: Is there any truth to that?
  - germanier 10y ago
    The Economist has a list of their corresponds and editors on their website http://mediadirectory.economist.com http://mediadirectory.economist.com They don't seem to be significantly younger or more inexperienced than other journalists. However, they don't have journalistic heavyweights that do month-long investigations or pump out one price winning report after another. Those are rare anyway. I know that they use a lot of stringers that remain unnamed. It is not unusual to have freelancers do research without naming them but as far as I know they also contribute whole articles. Likely these are people that also work for other news outlets.

I'd have a tough time deciding between the NYT and WSJ next, especially since the editorial/opinion section of the WaPo is the least valuable to me (informed opinion is something you can get everywhere on the Internet for free). (WaPo vs. NYT was basically a coinflip decision for me, but doing WaPo and then NYT would probably create a pretty significant overlap, and WSJ wouldn't. On the other hand, the NYT is a substantially better site than WSJ).

griffordson 10y ago
WSJ + WaPo is great IMO. My morning routine is WSJ, FT, WaPo, and sometimes NYT. The NYT is my least favored source partly because they skew too heavily toward my biases and I prefer reading high quality news from alternative perspectives more. YMMV.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I'd suggest the FT as among the highest quality papers. Or a good monthly. One axis of quality measures here, using the Foreign Policy Top 100 Global Thinkers list: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...

appleiigs 10y ago

It's good for American news. For a wider angle and a good website and app, Financial Times is great.

dmix 10y ago

I've found WSJ to be a very good paper, especially for geopolitics and finance. NYT and WaPo's political slant is almost becoming unreadable for someone who's moderate and disinterested in either US party. I can't speak for WaPo but I've been reading NYT for a decade now and their total abandonment of any attempt at political neutrality was disheartening this past year. My only problem with WSJ is it's very expensive compared to NYT. About 3-4x as expensive as a Canadian. So I've been using WaPo recently, they're slightly better than NYT but only slightly. Probably going to go full WSJ soon.

rsync 10y ago

"The Wall St. Journal is the single highest quality news source I'm aware of." I prefer the NYT and think the reporting is better and broader - especially with regard to the fluffier sections like Sunday Styles, the Magazine, the Book Review and so on ... if I had to pick a single news source I think the A section of NYT would be my choice. However, I have to say that I enjoy reading the Financial Times more because of their practice of condensing a story into a single page without a fold and without a jump to another page. They explore the story in more depth deeper in the paper, but you can read the front page headline column from start to finish without unfolding and page turning. Also, the NYT has this habit of vastly over-backgrounding quotes ... a ten word quote will have 2-3 inches of comma-delimited background and qualifications and it just breaks the story and is hard to read.

hedora 10y ago

They dropped in quality sharply when Murdoch acquired them, and fired a big chunk of the team. Then they started focusing on offensive conservative propaganda on their editorial page. At that point I stopped reading or paying attention to them. Frankly, I welcome the news about the paywall since it will mean I see fewer links to their "journalism". Has something changed in the last few years? Did they somehow turn things around? [edit: Just wanted to point out that the events I'm referring to were about a decade ago. Concretely, before the acquisition, it seemed like the WSJ was driving something like 50% of the daily news cycle with a difficult to discern bias. Upper management intentionally destroyed that, at least from an outsider perspective. Reading the other comments and stories about the whole fake news phenomenon makes me think no one has managed to replicate the function they used to serve.]

tptacek 10y ago
The WSJ editorial page was famously a conservative bastion long before Murdoch bought them. But this conversation is a rat-hole. We can generate 1000 comments about any major newspaper. I think my point was just: pick one and subscribe to it.
crdoconnor 10y ago
Their opinion pages have always been filled with grade A crazies and that does actually seem to have gotten worse, but their reporting is still good. This was one I read recently that actually made a good job of covering the real story in detail: http://blogs.wsj.com/indonesiarealtime/2013/08/26/the-strike-that-rattled-singapore-a-wsj-investigation/ http://blogs.wsj.com/indonesiarealtime/2013/08/26/the-strike...

friedman23 10y ago

The economist is the only other news source that I know of that is on par.

DashRattlesnake 10y ago
I've heard that it's reporters are actually quite young and inexperienced, but the editorial anonymity masks that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonymity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Editorial_anonym...: Is there any truth to that?
- germanier 10y ago
  The Economist has a list of their corresponds and editors on their website http://mediadirectory.economist.com http://mediadirectory.economist.com They don't seem to be significantly younger or more inexperienced than other journalists. However, they don't have journalistic heavyweights that do month-long investigations or pump out one price winning report after another. Those are rare anyway. I know that they use a lot of stringers that remain unnamed. It is not unusual to have freelancers do research without naming them but as far as I know they also contribute whole articles. Likely these are people that also work for other news outlets.