5 ms·

Taking a step back, do we really _need_ to check news every day? I read The Economist which is weekly, and I haven't felt like I'm uninformed much.

ptk 5y ago
This is me too. And the me of 2 years ago would have been aghast about that. But I now finding myself missing pretty major news cycles regularly because eventually you learn to trust the fact that you can "catch up" at any point in time. I've really enjoyed letting news happen and not getting caught up in the immediacy of it.
throwawayboise 5y ago
I've stopped. I check my local news, I still read HN daily, but I don't watch or read any TV or national news. 99.9% of it has zero impact on my day-to-day life.
all2 5y ago
Replying to throwawayboise: I've done the same exact thing. I find very little usefulness in the national and international posturing, blaming, and virtue signaling that makes up most broadcast, cable, and print news.
tomjen3 5y ago
I didn't need to before Covid, but our government decided that it was okay to change rules (drastically), on a day-to-day basis, then when they got called out for changing them with less than 24 hour warning, decided that 48 hours was fine. If you didn't follow the news, you could get caught up and have to pay a not insubstantial fine, or more realistically you were planning to do something that was deemed safe enough some days earlier. An older example: if you didn't pay attention to the news on 9/11 you risked being stuck in the airport for a very long time. So yeah, there are situations where you do need to follow the news. Not often, but two global events have happened in my lifetime (3 if you count the fall of the Berlin wall) where you really did need to pay attention to the news. Maybe some sort of exponential back-of is warrented? Say you check the news and if nothing relevant happend you check in again the next day, then you skip a day, then two, etc. When an event happens where you need to follow the news (say a local flood), you go back to an hourly checkup. The final thing I have noticed is that the news you need to follow are mostly very local. What happens in other countries is, relatively speaking, of no importance to you.
- test_epsilon 5y ago
  I'm not being glib here, how do you link 9/11 and Covid regulations and Berlin wall to really needing to pay attention to the news? Check your government website if you want to know what the regulations are today, or check your airport and airline sites before you leave for the airport if you're worried about delays. You don't need "news" for this. I don't think you need to over complicate it. There's nothing wrong with checking the news daily if that's what you like, or following some particular stories or events important to you even more regularly. A compulsion to keep checking, spending hours a day on it, or some fear that you need to check or you'll miss out is where it could negatively affect your life.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I don't need to read the news to discover covid, it was on hacker news long before it hit the media and I don't need them or the government to read/understand an exponential graph. I needed them to keep taps on the government and explain the ever changing rules in a better, more clear way. It is not important for the government to make the rules simple, understandable or appreciable so they didn't. That is not overclomplicating it, btw. That is responding to reality.
    - test_epsilon 5y ago
      If you were that concerned exactly following the rules that change on a daily basis and are so difficult to decipher, why would you trust a journalist to get it right for you? What country, by the way, I'd like to see these crazy rules for myself. And by over complicating it, I'm talking about this exponential backoff algorithm. You can read the news if you want, don't feel bad about it. Nothing bad is going to happen and you won't miss out on much if you don't though. And I promise you you would spend more time scouring the news for 9/11 type events than you would spend stuck in airports due to said events because you didn't read the news.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  I stopped reading the news since a few years, mainly because of the low signal/noise ratio and because it's time-consuming. I assure you, you still hear about the big events without issue. Just your usual day-to-day is more than enough to hear about the important news very quickly. There's no way you could have missed 9/11 or the Covid lockdowns. I mean, I don't care a bit about soccer and I still heard within hours when my country was eliminated from the Euro. And whenever something particular sounds like it deserves your attention you can go read about it on whatever news website. But that's fairly rare.
Torwald 5y ago
We don't have to check news everyday, but on that day when the BIG news hit, you want to be there and soon enough.
- TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
  If it's that important, either I'll get an emergency broadcast text or it won't be televised. Otherwise, a family member will call me or I'll hear about it from other people.
- DashAnimal 5y ago
  What would you say were the big news hits of the last year? Also why do you need to be there soon enough? Reflecting for myself, I used to feel the same way, but quit news about 6 months ago and have never felt happier. No longer am I sinking valuable hours into something that didn't bring me happiness or help me better myself.
throwawaysea 5y ago
The problem is only the more informed and better educated people take news slowly and form opinions slowly. But the masses are on these social platforms getting influenced by hot takes, and then they go vote with their poorly informed but strongly held opinions. This ends up affecting the rest of us who prefer taking in non-extremist long form information, since our society is effectively controlled by those engaging in social media. So it feels like we too are forced to engage in these terribly designed social media platforms in order to not lose our [political voice / country / whatever]. In a way, the existence of these social platforms with huge user bases and network effects drastically reduces the value of traditional media. What’s the point of keeping myself informed if only what happens in social media changes my world?

ptk 5y ago

This is me too. And the me of 2 years ago would have been aghast about that. But I now finding myself missing pretty major news cycles regularly because eventually you learn to trust the fact that you can "catch up" at any point in time. I've really enjoyed letting news happen and not getting caught up in the immediacy of it.

throwawayboise 5y ago

I've stopped. I check my local news, I still read HN daily, but I don't watch or read any TV or national news. 99.9% of it has zero impact on my day-to-day life.

all2 5y ago

Replying to throwawayboise: I've done the same exact thing. I find very little usefulness in the national and international posturing, blaming, and virtue signaling that makes up most broadcast, cable, and print news.

tomjen3 5y ago

I didn't need to before Covid, but our government decided that it was okay to change rules (drastically), on a day-to-day basis, then when they got called out for changing them with less than 24 hour warning, decided that 48 hours was fine. If you didn't follow the news, you could get caught up and have to pay a not insubstantial fine, or more realistically you were planning to do something that was deemed safe enough some days earlier. An older example: if you didn't pay attention to the news on 9/11 you risked being stuck in the airport for a very long time. So yeah, there are situations where you do need to follow the news. Not often, but two global events have happened in my lifetime (3 if you count the fall of the Berlin wall) where you really did need to pay attention to the news. Maybe some sort of exponential back-of is warrented? Say you check the news and if nothing relevant happend you check in again the next day, then you skip a day, then two, etc. When an event happens where you need to follow the news (say a local flood), you go back to an hourly checkup. The final thing I have noticed is that the news you need to follow are mostly very local. What happens in other countries is, relatively speaking, of no importance to you.

test_epsilon 5y ago
I'm not being glib here, how do you link 9/11 and Covid regulations and Berlin wall to really needing to pay attention to the news? Check your government website if you want to know what the regulations are today, or check your airport and airline sites before you leave for the airport if you're worried about delays. You don't need "news" for this. I don't think you need to over complicate it. There's nothing wrong with checking the news daily if that's what you like, or following some particular stories or events important to you even more regularly. A compulsion to keep checking, spending hours a day on it, or some fear that you need to check or you'll miss out is where it could negatively affect your life.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I don't need to read the news to discover covid, it was on hacker news long before it hit the media and I don't need them or the government to read/understand an exponential graph. I needed them to keep taps on the government and explain the ever changing rules in a better, more clear way. It is not important for the government to make the rules simple, understandable or appreciable so they didn't. That is not overclomplicating it, btw. That is responding to reality.
  - test_epsilon 5y ago
    If you were that concerned exactly following the rules that change on a daily basis and are so difficult to decipher, why would you trust a journalist to get it right for you? What country, by the way, I'd like to see these crazy rules for myself. And by over complicating it, I'm talking about this exponential backoff algorithm. You can read the news if you want, don't feel bad about it. Nothing bad is going to happen and you won't miss out on much if you don't though. And I promise you you would spend more time scouring the news for 9/11 type events than you would spend stuck in airports due to said events because you didn't read the news.
benhurmarcel 5y ago
I stopped reading the news since a few years, mainly because of the low signal/noise ratio and because it's time-consuming. I assure you, you still hear about the big events without issue. Just your usual day-to-day is more than enough to hear about the important news very quickly. There's no way you could have missed 9/11 or the Covid lockdowns. I mean, I don't care a bit about soccer and I still heard within hours when my country was eliminated from the Euro. And whenever something particular sounds like it deserves your attention you can go read about it on whatever news website. But that's fairly rare.

Torwald 5y ago

We don't have to check news everyday, but on that day when the BIG news hit, you want to be there and soon enough.

TheAdamAndChe 5y ago
If it's that important, either I'll get an emergency broadcast text or it won't be televised. Otherwise, a family member will call me or I'll hear about it from other people.
DashAnimal 5y ago
What would you say were the big news hits of the last year? Also why do you need to be there soon enough? Reflecting for myself, I used to feel the same way, but quit news about 6 months ago and have never felt happier. No longer am I sinking valuable hours into something that didn't bring me happiness or help me better myself.

throwawaysea 5y ago

The problem is only the more informed and better educated people take news slowly and form opinions slowly. But the masses are on these social platforms getting influenced by hot takes, and then they go vote with their poorly informed but strongly held opinions. This ends up affecting the rest of us who prefer taking in non-extremist long form information, since our society is effectively controlled by those engaging in social media. So it feels like we too are forced to engage in these terribly designed social media platforms in order to not lose our [political voice / country / whatever]. In a way, the existence of these social platforms with huge user bases and network effects drastically reduces the value of traditional media. What’s the point of keeping myself informed if only what happens in social media changes my world?