5 ms·

I found my own solution a while back. I started reading newspapers. The up to the minute need for news is total and utter bullshit for like 95% of the populatio

I found my own solution a while back. I started reading newspapers. The up to the minute need for news is total and utter bullshit for like 95% of the population. Being a day behind on news is literally no different to me than knowing within an hour of it happening. Someone is going to mention politics, I know it. Let me beat you to it. What have you done same day when a politician you hated did something? Of consequence of course. Angry twating on twitter doesn’t count. Newspapers are fucking awesome. Easy to read. Easy as hell to skim. Headlines are 95% accurate to their article. Ads don’t track you and in truth, aren’t that lame in the paper compared to online. Granted I mostly read WSJ and sometimes NYTimes. But never online. Only reason I check CNN online is to see if there’s a catastrophe. Like when Notre Dame became an unholy gate to hell. Other than that, the news is pretty useless to begin with.

52-6F-62 7y ago
Aside: Have you seen https://lite.cnn.com https://lite.cnn.com ?
- corodra 7y ago
  Yea I’ve seen it. Problem is, I’ve found most online “news” is sensational and shallow as hell. CNN is not the only guilty party. So, again, I mainly go to it because they’re a great source to know who died today. Beyond that, their opinions about... well anything, can go in the dumpster fire. They really lost any potential shred of regaining respect when they were claiming, about 2 years ago, that China’s secret trade weapon was them unloading like a trillion in US bonds in one go. Anyone who has read any economics 101 of anything immediately knows that’s one of the dumbest comments of the century.
wishrider 7y ago
This is a delay on what happened in the past, I'm working on a project https://wishpage.tv/ https://wishpage.tv/ where you might have a delay in the other direction, into the future :) That's a request based approach where people vote for what they want to see and then with a delay the news gets delivered afterwards.
- save_ferris 7y ago
  how would this reasonably work for the news though? A major aspect of journalism is exposing to the public things they don't know but ought to know about (i.e. Catholic Church scandal, child separation at the border, paradise papers, etc). Your idea assumes that people know what they want to see before they see it, which seems pretty incompatible with reporting most of the news. That said, I think that's a cool project.
  - wishrider 7y ago
    I think it serves a niche where people can ask for content that they don't see yet or they don't see in the form they would like it. Another way to look at it would be to call it a news-room where people decide what they put into the news paper. I don't know how this works in real news papers, but maybe they hold a meeting and then the journalists decide what stories they pick up. People could get involved into that by voting for topics.
    - save_ferris 7y ago
      This reminds me a lot of the political echo chambers we're already seeing in the US media. If you think the Russia investigation is a big hoax, you watch Fox News. If you think otherwise, you watch CNN/MSNBC/etc. Choice in our news consumption is allowing people to believe that vaccines cause autism, that there's a "deep state" cabal of leaders secretly pulling the levers of power, that Russia didn't really interfere in the 2016 election. We no longer have to confront difficult truths, we can simply believe the version that we want to believe and ignore everything else. Choice in our news consumption is giving rise to incompatible versions of what's going on, and it's setting a pretty terrifying precedent. How can you give people a choice of what they want to see while maintaining a standard of quality that rises above propaganda?
      - wishrider 7y ago
        I don't know how to break the echo chamber issue, but one thing I don't like about the news market is that they are advertisement-based. Or rather the consequences that come from that, for example the long articles where they spread the important points over the whole text so that I spend a lot of time on the site. If I just jump to the article, stay for 10 secs and then leave this is considered to be negative, but if I get all my news points in those 10 seconds its great for me. And the click-bait titles because they want the views etc... So I imagine if say 1000 people make a wish to get a story covered and they even fund the wish, and the wish is "make a very short summary of this... including the following points..." then they can earn money by delivering on that. The result might be a very short article where people spend only 10 seconds and with a boring title, but they would still earn money with that.
WorldMaker 7y ago
Subscribing to a newspaper also sometimes unlocks less terrible websites for that newspaper.
- illirik 7y ago
  The Seattle Times has a great app for this. That said, if you don’t live in Seattle, not all the news will be of interest, but they’re a great model for what a good newspaper / news site is.
buzzert 7y ago
I agree with the sentiment, but I find newspapers to be really awful and difficult to read. The cheap ink they use leaves an unpleasant smell on my hands, the paper being so huge requires strategy in folding it just right so you can read the part you’re interested in, and the “continued on page (n)” is too much friction when adding up all the barriers previously mentioned. Personally, I’ve resorted to email newsletters like Quartz. They aren’t allowed to use JavaScript, and it is often a day late just like the newspaper so it doesn’t feed addiction, nor does it have to resort to psychology tricks like clickbait (well, not as often at least).
richjdsmith 7y ago
I couldn't agree more, except instead of newspapers, I got a couple magazine subscriptions (Maclean's & Bloomberg). I love it. I quit caring about what happened today, and instead I get my news a week later. I take the magazine (only one, I browse the other over the week) to a coffee shop on Saturday morning, have a couple coffees and read that weeks magazine. By not constantly being 'up to date' outside of occasionally using Twitter, I've found I'm a lot less stressed. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone.
- corodra 7y ago
  Oh, I totally agree to the magazine route as well. I actually like some of the geopolitics ones. Even of views I don't agree with. They're at least thoughtful essays.

52-6F-62 7y ago

Aside: Have you seen https://lite.cnn.com https://lite.cnn.com ?

corodra 7y ago
Yea I’ve seen it. Problem is, I’ve found most online “news” is sensational and shallow as hell. CNN is not the only guilty party. So, again, I mainly go to it because they’re a great source to know who died today. Beyond that, their opinions about... well anything, can go in the dumpster fire. They really lost any potential shred of regaining respect when they were claiming, about 2 years ago, that China’s secret trade weapon was them unloading like a trillion in US bonds in one go. Anyone who has read any economics 101 of anything immediately knows that’s one of the dumbest comments of the century.

wishrider 7y ago

This is a delay on what happened in the past, I'm working on a project https://wishpage.tv/ https://wishpage.tv/ where you might have a delay in the other direction, into the future :) That's a request based approach where people vote for what they want to see and then with a delay the news gets delivered afterwards.

save_ferris 7y ago
how would this reasonably work for the news though? A major aspect of journalism is exposing to the public things they don't know but ought to know about (i.e. Catholic Church scandal, child separation at the border, paradise papers, etc). Your idea assumes that people know what they want to see before they see it, which seems pretty incompatible with reporting most of the news. That said, I think that's a cool project.
- wishrider 7y ago
  I think it serves a niche where people can ask for content that they don't see yet or they don't see in the form they would like it. Another way to look at it would be to call it a news-room where people decide what they put into the news paper. I don't know how this works in real news papers, but maybe they hold a meeting and then the journalists decide what stories they pick up. People could get involved into that by voting for topics.
  - save_ferris 7y ago
    This reminds me a lot of the political echo chambers we're already seeing in the US media. If you think the Russia investigation is a big hoax, you watch Fox News. If you think otherwise, you watch CNN/MSNBC/etc. Choice in our news consumption is allowing people to believe that vaccines cause autism, that there's a "deep state" cabal of leaders secretly pulling the levers of power, that Russia didn't really interfere in the 2016 election. We no longer have to confront difficult truths, we can simply believe the version that we want to believe and ignore everything else. Choice in our news consumption is giving rise to incompatible versions of what's going on, and it's setting a pretty terrifying precedent. How can you give people a choice of what they want to see while maintaining a standard of quality that rises above propaganda?
    - wishrider 7y ago
      I don't know how to break the echo chamber issue, but one thing I don't like about the news market is that they are advertisement-based. Or rather the consequences that come from that, for example the long articles where they spread the important points over the whole text so that I spend a lot of time on the site. If I just jump to the article, stay for 10 secs and then leave this is considered to be negative, but if I get all my news points in those 10 seconds its great for me. And the click-bait titles because they want the views etc... So I imagine if say 1000 people make a wish to get a story covered and they even fund the wish, and the wish is "make a very short summary of this... including the following points..." then they can earn money by delivering on that. The result might be a very short article where people spend only 10 seconds and with a boring title, but they would still earn money with that.

WorldMaker 7y ago

Subscribing to a newspaper also sometimes unlocks less terrible websites for that newspaper.

illirik 7y ago
The Seattle Times has a great app for this. That said, if you don’t live in Seattle, not all the news will be of interest, but they’re a great model for what a good newspaper / news site is.

buzzert 7y ago

I agree with the sentiment, but I find newspapers to be really awful and difficult to read. The cheap ink they use leaves an unpleasant smell on my hands, the paper being so huge requires strategy in folding it just right so you can read the part you’re interested in, and the “continued on page (n)” is too much friction when adding up all the barriers previously mentioned. Personally, I’ve resorted to email newsletters like Quartz. They aren’t allowed to use JavaScript, and it is often a day late just like the newspaper so it doesn’t feed addiction, nor does it have to resort to psychology tricks like clickbait (well, not as often at least).

richjdsmith 7y ago

I couldn't agree more, except instead of newspapers, I got a couple magazine subscriptions (Maclean's & Bloomberg). I love it. I quit caring about what happened today, and instead I get my news a week later. I take the magazine (only one, I browse the other over the week) to a coffee shop on Saturday morning, have a couple coffees and read that weeks magazine. By not constantly being 'up to date' outside of occasionally using Twitter, I've found I'm a lot less stressed. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone.

corodra 7y ago
Oh, I totally agree to the magazine route as well. I actually like some of the geopolitics ones. Even of views I don't agree with. They're at least thoughtful essays.