15 ms·

Stop Reading News (2013)

171 points by phgn 5y ago

nikkinana 5y ago
Of course. "news" is another word for "programming"
mumblemumble 5y ago
My personal rule is that I only consume news in a language I don't speak well. It's tiring, which discourages doomscrolling and the like. It tends to be less psychologically troublesome, because reporters tend to be less melodramatic about news that doesn't directly involve members of their core audience. And, even when it's crap journalism that has absolutely no other merit, it's still good language practice.
- burlesona 5y ago
  That’s very interesting. Do you have any recommendations for global news coverage in languages other than English?
  - trizzle21 5y ago
    I like the BBC foreign language news (particularly Spanish)
  - jgwil2 5y ago
    Not OP but most Western European countries have a public broadcasting company that can be a good source (e.g. France 24 for French, DW for German) if you are learning one of those languages.
  - eynsham 5y ago
    Le Monde diplomatique is not strictly a news publication but is a rather interesting read. It also has editions in Spanish. If you can read Chinese well enough, some of the Hong Kong press is still quite vibrant and interesting: see e.g. the Hong Kong Economic Journal and Ming Pao (that’s probably about it, alas.) There are some good public broadcasters mentioned in another reply. I’d also recommend the output of Arte (Association relative à la télévision européenne), France Culture, and France Musique. I have occasionally listened to Radio Liban 96.2 to listen to other accents but to be honest the presenters sound like they speak perfect Parisian French to me (if not the interviewees). Some of their programmes are interesting.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - unfunco 5y ago
    You could try BBC Pidgin if you only speak English. https://www.bbc.com/pidgin https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
    - usefulcat 5y ago
      Wow, I had no idea that existed. TIL.
  - iamcurious 5y ago
    Any recommendations for italian? edit: I also asked for something international and with only titles, without images, like HN. But reading other comments, I could configure an RSS client for that. So, any news recommendations for italian?
    - eafkuor 5y ago
      https://www.ilpost.it https://www.ilpost.it In my humble opinion, the best Italian news website.
- AzzieElbab 5y ago
  That is an interesting approach. Being a non native English speaker I sometimes feel that a lot of language games in news do not work on me. It feels a lot like what Scott Adams meant by “watching two different movies on the same screen”
- misiti3780 5y ago
  This is a great idea!
- saint_angels 5y ago
  recommendations in simplified Chinese/Mandarin anyone?
fergie 5y ago
"Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about the media we consume: Is this good for me? Is this dense with detailed information? Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time? Is the person writing someone who is well informed on the issue?" Actually, I think most informed people are asking precisely those questions about the media they consume.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Both can be true.
Dumblydorr 5y ago
In my view, ads are mostly to blame here. Just because the quantity of news is increasing and average quality of news is deteriorating, that does not mean all news is low quality and misinforming. I've read the NYT and NPR for years, they're still fine sources with actual experts and journalists, and they don't rely upon cheap ads. If your goal is information, what you really need to avoid is entertainment masquerading as news. Cable news, YT, many podcasts, many subreddits or forums, they're all ideas submitted with little fact checking and little filter. They're shown to you by algorithms and TV executives because they'll captivate, make you fearful, make you react and keep watching more ads. Is your attention truly worth a couple measly cents of ads to some media corporation?
- wombat-man 5y ago
  Yeah, stop watching cable news. Take anything news related on social media with a helping of salt. Serious publications are usually more reliable even if they have a little bit of a slant. I also like skimming memeorandum.com since it mainly just shows what people are discussing. Important to know that articles there are popular topics, but not necessarily accurate/objective.
  - lame-robot-hoax 5y ago
    This is how I feel. 80% of the news I consume is from AP or Reuters. The rest is probably divided up between The Economist, Axios, and NPR. If I watch the news on TV, which is rare, it’s PBS NewsHour, or local news. I feel like this article is conflating “staying informed” with watching CNN or Fox News 24/7. Or reading obsessively every article published on National Review, NYT, Fox, WaPo, etc. You can still moderately consume more objectively grounded news sources, and stay more informed than if you didn’t at all, while not being addicted to having the news on 24/7.
nobody0 5y ago
Does Hacker News count? I guess frictions matters, our brains constantly seek the shortest path to getting excited. Recently I resorted back to order physical books, and enjoy waiting for the books to arrive.
- einpoklum 5y ago
  Well, > Second, the cost to produce news has dropped significantly. So, yeah, Hacker News definitely counts... :-(
- iamcurious 5y ago
  I like the aesthetic and crowd, but it is still a news site made by an incubator behind billion dollar coorporations.
who_in_the_wind 5y ago
I think this speaks more to the issues of trusting online media than specifically the news. The incentives of the web and the incentives of conveying information are not well aligned (for capitalism reasons). > If you must read the news, read it for the facts and the data, not the opinions. This should have been the first sentence. It's not that consuming the news is bad, it's that often the way that it's delivered is emotional (which is sometimes valid, I think) or sensational. I'd also argue, with absolutely no data, that, at least in the US, the shift in how folks consume media in general (low effort, highly emotional) has pushed the news in that direction.
- bityard 5y ago
  Even if we get past the emotional click-baitey aspect of mass-media news (and also your jab at capitalism), the fact remains that 99% of news is not relevant to the average person's day-to-day life and is wholly _unactionable_. Meaning, there is nothing you can read on the front-page of CNN that we, the people, can do anything about. (I'll carve out a small exception here for pointers to relief funds for disasters, perhaps.) "Staying informed" for its own sake is just a hobby. The most utility you can possibly gain from it is arguing your point of view (politics) with other people online or in real life. Real important events that directly affect me and my family either never hit the mass media, or will be relayed to me through my _actual_ social networks (not facebook or the twitters). National and world trends that might influence my long-term decisions (how to retire, when to invest, etc) don't reveal themselves by reading the news every day, these are things I actively research from time to time via my own means.
- KennyBlanken 5y ago
  > > If you must read the news, read it for the facts and the data, not the opinions. > This should have been the first sentence. Quality news organizations distinguish between reporting, analysis, and opinion. The author of the piece (and many people in the comments here) seem unaware of this or are just purposefully hopping on the "news is bad" bandwagon. Take a look at the guy's twitter feed and you'll see his bread and butter is incredibly bland "knowledge drops." For example, here's a direct quote of one of his tweets: "Hiring a professional is expensive but hiring an amateur costs a fortune." Any time you see people talking negatively about news organizations (ie "the media"), be on the lookout for fascism, because spreading distrust and disinterest in the news is one of the goals of fascists.
qudat 5y ago
It's really easy to slip into news as entertainment. The same is true for politics. When treated as entertainment, I think it puts the proper perspective on its utility -- dubious.
jaredwiener 5y ago
This really seems like a list of reasons to stop reading low-quality news sources. Not all news is the same.
II2II 5y ago
While many of the points made by this article are valid, it fails to address important questions like: how can we remain informed and how do we decide what is important enough to be informed about? I stopped reading the news on a regular basis many years ago. There were a few reasons for that. One is that most of the news is about topics that we have no control over, another is that news is highly repetitive in nature (few significant events are isolated to a particular day or week). Yet the biggest reason is that much of what is presented as news is actually opinion. While the author suggest separating fact from opinion, that is usually only possible to achieve by reading the news. News outlets may denote a handful of prominent sources as opinion or analysis, but they aren't going to do that for a puffed up piece where the facts alone would barely fill a paragraph. Is my life better for ignoring the news? Probably, but I will also admit that I miss out on many things that I should be informed about.
- snarf21 5y ago
  I agree with you but today's "news" is really just infotainment designed to outrage. When was the last time you read a headline that wasn't click-bait? The issue is that we want news to match the speed of Twitter and FB. Most people will never go read 4 articles with point/counter about any topic. No one has the time and the world is too complicated. My approach is to wait until I hear enough other people talking about something that maybe I should get up to speed. Otherwise, I don't bother. This will continue until we make fear-mongering less profitable. As you said how do you separate fact from opinion? In some cases, certain details aren't even available. Take the following statement/headline, it is 100% true but likely will invoke different feelings and opinions depending on your position: "Prior to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the President negotiated the release of 400 Taliban leaders from prison". This is super click bait and if you did the research into this statement, you are likely to count it as fake if it disagrees with your current position.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    I just wish as a civilisation we could simply reject "enragement is engagement" for the foul influence it actually is. That entire repulsive concept has done so much harm to society, instead of turning our anger on each-other over opinions that are barely our own to begin with we should reserve it for those who profit from tearing apart the relationships of friends and family by making people as angry as possible in order to consume their content. They're the real cause for anger here, not our neighbours with different opinions. As long as people stick too rigidly to any orthodoxy, there will always be morally weak people willing to sell them firewood to burn their heretics with. In this case, that firewood salesman is simply called "the news industry". What would stop this in its tracks would be to promote a new social attitude that sees the intrinsic worth and dignity in all human beings regardless of their differences, a deeply non-sectarian philosophy that says "you and I disagree and that's okay, neither of us are inherently bad people because of that".
AzzieElbab 5y ago
Removing almost every blue check journalist from my feed certainly improved my Twitter experience. It is no longer about news, it is about stirring sht up. According to the news we have been living in parallel universe for ages
bojangleslover 5y ago
"At some point in the future, news will likely be tailored for you."
- beebeepka 5y ago
  How about 'news' that will be generated for you. Almost there
  - Koshkin 5y ago
    That would be a powerful mind control technique.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  Like advertisement already is. (Infomercials is a thing.)
badRNG 5y ago
I read the news in part to be entertained, and to have something to talk about with others in the way that sports fans always keep up with new players, stats, and upcoming games. We can all think of low quality, highly polemic news sources that turn our friends and colleagues into absolute monsters, but I'm not talking about that. It's news like HN, stuff from my favorite quirky subreddits and blogs, news in tech and gaming, and a skim of apnews.com & WSJ from time to time. Sometimes when I do stuff I enjoy, I have no further motivation than the enjoyment itself. I'm not under the delusion that keeping up with breaking news is going to help me change the world or become a better citizen or something.
AzzieElbab 5y ago
The news media is so bad in the US, I am seeing alternative news media in development. This new media is dedicated solely to criticism of the old media. Kind of like the original Daily Show but unfunny
javier10e6 5y ago
CNN: Amuse yourself. NYT: Me and my money. WAPO: Them and what used to be my money. LAT: The news, with looks and style that will dazzle.
nanna 5y ago
I think it's possible to stay fairly well informed without becoming a news junkie. Tactics that have worked for me: - RSS feeds for daily news - Weekly summaries from The Week magazine (UK) posted through letterbox. - Fortnightly from serious long reads such as the London Review of Books. - Podcasts from serious research organisations. - Decent books for things I really care about. - Avoid twitter, it's a vampire. - NEVER EVER JUST GO TO THEGUARDIAN.COM TO SEE WHATS GOING ON. (Subscribe to their RSS feeds instead).
eruci 5y ago
So says a website, that immediately asks for my email with the intent of sending me even more news: "Weekly Wisdom You Can Use In 5 minutes. For Free. Enter your email here... Enter your email here... SUBSCRIBE No Spam. Only Timeless Insights."
scbrg 5y ago
Somewhat related, Aaron Swartz' take on news: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews I can't say I agree with him 100%, but he sure has a point.
erikbye 5y ago
If we go back hundreds of years, to the days of the first newspapers, consuming news had more importance. Financially and health-wise. It probably also gave a greater sense of belonging and something to talk about. I'm 40 and I cannot think of a single instance where consuming news (the of the moment, ephemeral kind we're talking about here) saved my ass in some way. It never had a direct effect, not even the extra-extra-read-all-about-it! news. News of critical events, the 22/7 (Norway), 9/11, and gas leak type of events, always reached me through a phone call from a friend or relative before I read about it anywhere. And certainly, other types of news, non-critical events kind, was never important enough to hear about right after or during the occurrence. Then again, I'm not a have-to-watch-it-live kind of guy, I can enjoy the replay. Whether consuming the news causes more stress like some studies claim, I don't know, but I certainly think it a waste of ones time. As for having something to talk about, hell, I have more than enough to talk about without knowing what happened in the world the last few moments, or even yesterday. Not consuming this type of news is not choosing to stay uninformed. I read analysis, editorials, history, etc.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I never saw news consumption for having something to talk about. Obviously as a voting citizen, my vote ought to be informed. If there is something IO should be outraged about, outraged enough to take to the streets and protest about, I want to know about it. Also, for things like the environment, financial health of the country/world, I like to be able to see trends (or think that I do) and am less likely to be surprised by either a positive or negative turn of events in the future. All that being said, I do not need a daily stream of news — something much more coarse than daily would be more than adequate.
ChrisArchitect 5y ago
anything new on this topic since 2013 you think? Plenty of previous discussion from 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099
rossdavidh 5y ago
I recently discovered 1440, a news email which gives you a 5-minute summary of the day's news. They don't know or care how long I spend consuming, so they don't have as much incentive to be melodramatic. I open the email, read it, and that's pretty much it. Much less time, much less melodrama, and if something enormously important happened that day I will still hear about it. It's really a lot more like the financial model and incentives of print newspapers several decades ago. https://join1440.com/ https://join1440.com/ Before you ask, no, I don't work for or have any financial interest.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Anything you know of that is not daily but weekly (and summarizes the week)? I ask because, as the article suggests, a story can change day to day — giving news a week before consuming means you're more likely to get a cogent picture of the event.
  - 0xFACEFEED 5y ago
    I read Wikipedia current events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month. I like being able to opt-in.
bityard 5y ago
This is the blog post that inspired me to stop reading mass-media produced news years ago: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-information-diet/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-informati...
carbine 5y ago
I used to be a big news consumer. Eventually canceled my NYT sub and quit all national news, except when something major is happening or when I’m about to vote. I read The Economist because it’s one of the last excellent publications and it does seem to help improve my thinking, especially with respect to understanding the macro landscape and investing. But yes, following every Congressional drama is probably a waste of your time. I do think consumption of local news is not a bad idea — that’s the one arena where we could all probably benefit our communities by being more engaged. (Follow the zoning debates, not the murder mysteries.)
- dionidium 5y ago
  > I do think consumption of local news is not a bad idea — that’s the one arena where we could all probably benefit our communities by being more engaged. (Follow the zoning debates, not the murder mysteries.) The Metro section has always been my favorite part of the local paper and the one I read first on Sunday mornings.
- DiggyJohnson 5y ago
  The CXO of my massive employer once mentioned that the Economist was the only publication they still subscribed and read diligently. Do you find that yourself preferring the Economist on certain issues, and less strong elsewhere? For some reason I'm really interested in seeing a positive-yet-balanced review or anecdote about print journalism. I think it's the novelty-cheers.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    I prefer the Economist on all Issues. I think they tend to be the most neutral and even if they say something I disagree with, I am able to acknowledge their position and accept the points they are making.
    - carbine 5y ago
      Agreed, they’re consistently excellent on all issues. One minute you’re learning about Chinese domestic policy, the next you’re going deep on advances in particle physics. And they’re underrated for their humour —- occasionally there’s a bone dry joke in there. Probably part of what makes it great is that journalists don’t put their names on their columns. Articles are pretty much all written with the same rigorously specific tone, and if they share an opinion they make it clear that’s what they’re doing and they generally do so on behalf of the magazine. It’s about the journalism, not anyone’s Twitter following.
User23 5y ago
As a general rule the national news is intended to persuade and is only informative if persuasion happens to require it. This becomes extremely obvious when one compares the national news to the local news. The latter is relatively more concerned with informing than persuading. This was particularly clear during the 2020 protests where the national news was observably tasked with persuading viewers that these were legitimate (mostly) peaceful protests and not violent riots. Meanwhile, the local news where events were occurring provided the exceedingly valuable service of keeping people continually informed via airborne footage about where they might prefer to not go at the time.
tootie 5y ago
I think the real advice is here "don't be irrational" and it's easier said than done. News sources obviously vary in quality and even the best are run by fallible humans so you're never fully safe. But really being informed is a net positive. So I think it's pretty silly to live in ignorance because you can't be trusted with more information.
tester34 5y ago
not that long time ago I wrote this on HN >but what's the point of watching(/reading) news? why bother? >It's poor deal, it's not worth. >Just because I may learn some small things that probably do not affect me directly and additionally receive some news that make my mood worse due to hearing some yet another negative news about bad stuff / politics / yada yada, what's the point? >80% of the news I read is HN and some programming related websites and whenever I jump into "mainstream" media, then I feel like I'm reading some shit - click baits, tragedies, controversial stuff, drama seeking, celebrities >it's irrelevant for me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27433589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27433589 now, if I just managed to drop HN and Reddit then I'd be free I guess I'd have to change career.
karaterobot 5y ago
As the world gets crazier, people consume more news about it. I'd been talking to a smarter person than myself about this topic, and he observed that the causality may be in the other direction. That idea makes some sense. I know that, in my life, worrying too much and too intensely about something makes me edgy and drive me down cul-de-sacs. It's not unbelievable to me that something like that could happen on the scale of a whole culture, and if it did, it might look a lot like the world we're living in.
Koshkin 5y ago
… except Hacker News!
thatjoeoverthr 5y ago
I stopped reading news. Often, it just looks like gaslighting. When I read content on a topic I’m familiar with, it’s clear that many journalists don’t even Google things they cover. But most importantly, it isn’t actionable. It’s inactionable stress. Consider elections. When I get a voting card, I can just look up the candidates or choices when I have the most information. Frivolous minutia like ice cream scandals (Trump and Pelosi have both had ice cream scandals!) doesn’t even show up. Frankly my experience of the world is drastically different without letting an entire industry wind me up on purpose. People I know personally who are overexposed to the news look, to me, like they have been mentally poisoned. There is a kind of rage and demoralization. Left or right wing. They’re just wound up by different people. It’s frankly disturbing. I don’t have a solution to everything. But aside from researching when things are actionable, one thing we have in Poland is the government just texts you sometimes. For example I’d get a text whenever they’d change the covid lockdown rules. Maybe that’s a good lead. Some kind of actionability oriented news aggregator with push notifications. Maybe I should code that.
p5v 5y ago
I know this will sound like a product pitch, but please, bear with me. One of the reasons we set out to create our service Murmel(https://murmel.social/ https://murmel.social/) was because we were pissed off reading the same crappy story retold by ten different sources. On top of it all, each story tells you the version its author wants you to see, but rarely shows you all sides of the picture. What we wanted to give people was a little bit more context. We wanted to abstract away from stories being distinctly left or right-wing. Instead, we simply ranked the stories that a large group of people on Twitter thinks we should be reading, and mashed the Twitter discussion into each story. This way at least, you can tell from the discussion whether a story is worth reading: https://murmel.social/top https://murmel.social/top
fortran77 5y ago
I find once a week news reading is the best bet. Read the Weekend WSJ, the Sunday NY Times, and a couple of weekly publications. This way you're not chasing and getting aggravated over the news cycle.
jancsika 5y ago
Me: I saw some interesting comments by Alan Kay on HN. Troll: HN is garbage. Quit reading it. Mutatis mutandis for the author's article. If you have so little idea of how to assess journalists' output over time that you don't even think to mention it in a critique of news, then you haven't really started to read the news yet. Edit: ah, lemme protect against accusations of No True Scotsman: the author is literally reading the news but is doing so in a superficial manner that an intro civics class would correct.
WaitWaitWha 5y ago
I think the key part is in there somewhere. There is a caveat here I presume for all these posts. Few of you are writing about work related, industry news. Not all news is relevant to me, as they do not impact my day-to-day life or I can do very little about it. These news are a rarely worth consuming. As others have noted, relevance and impact. Now, I have to go and formalize my mental model of news filtering...
pauljonas 5y ago
But democracy dies in darkness!
cafard 5y ago
Should we stop reading news, or stop reading opinions and reactions to news? One of the things about a print newspaper is the way that it brings in everything from local school board decisions to elections halfway across the globe. Of course, real news is the most expensive to gather, so it has tended to suffer over the years.
cortexio 5y ago
Reminds me of a belgian docu-like tv show, where a group started sending fake news articles to belgian media over a 2 year span. It just straight out worked. It was so easy and they didnt even try really. It was all a joke to them. Anyway, it was good television. In the end they got caught though. And all the media orgs were making articles saying that what they did, was unacceptable... instead of being dissapointed in their lack of checking sources. It's just sad. just stop reading news. It's worthless.
freediver 5y ago
"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter." ― Aleister Crowley "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson Few more great resources on this topic: https://tinygem.org/about/#stopnews https://tinygem.org/about/#stopnews
yboris 5y ago
News do not give you an accurate picture of the world. Almost by definition, if something is statistically average (happens all the time) it is not news. So seeing all the murderers on TV makes people think there is more of it going on than if they simply looked at the statistics.
dionidium 5y ago
I'll repeat what I always say whenever this comes up: subscribe to the Sunday edition of a major city daily. If your city doesn't have a very good one, then just do the New York Times (but note that the Metro section is one of the most interesting and useful parts of the daily paper and you'll miss out on that if you subscribe to a national paper). You want the Sunday edition because it's the week's largest edition and contains stories that ran earlier in the week, plus sections that aren't in the weekday editions. And you probably want real paper. The idea is to scan through it from beginning to end, getting an idea of what the major stories are and what's broadly happening in the world. Read it over coffee or while watching football or whatever. Anything more than this is entertainment. It's not important and won't make you more informed. If you want to read more than that because you like it, then that's fine. Some people like The Bachelor. But they don't confuse it for an education. It's entertainment.
mrkramer 5y ago
Then I wouldn't know how much they lie to me.
socialleaf 5y ago
It's important to understand that there's only one news. Rest everything that different news outlets publish are perspectives. It's a classic example of the elephant and 10 blind men. A news is a one time event observed in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person perspective. When news outlets start acting as businesses, the need for differentiation leads them to dig out the different interpretations of the same event and report those that have higher probability of capturing public attention. Reading multiple interpretations of the same news could feel like something really big and noteworth has happened. In effect, it's the same news being reported everywhere.
nicholascloud 5y ago
In a similar vein, I recommend Neil Postman's book "How to Watch TV News". It's a little dated, but his recommendations are still relevant to modern media formats. One of his most interesting (and obvious in hindsight) insights is that "news" is NOT what is happening around you; it's what someone else TELLS YOU is happening around you, based on a complex set of criteria that they use to prioritize, include, and exclude information, and is not in any way comprehensive. This is necessary due to the limits of communication, but can also have profound effects on the impressions we then carry with us regarding what we think about the world around us. The book is short, but rich; I highly recommend it.

171 points by phgn 5y ago

Of course. "news" is another word for "programming"

My personal rule is that I only consume news in a language I don't speak well. It's tiring, which discourages doomscrolling and the like. It tends to be less psychologically troublesome, because reporters tend to be less melodramatic about news that doesn't directly involve members of their core audience. And, even when it's crap journalism that has absolutely no other merit, it's still good language practice.

burlesona 5y ago
That’s very interesting. Do you have any recommendations for global news coverage in languages other than English?
- trizzle21 5y ago
  I like the BBC foreign language news (particularly Spanish)
- jgwil2 5y ago
  Not OP but most Western European countries have a public broadcasting company that can be a good source (e.g. France 24 for French, DW for German) if you are learning one of those languages.
- eynsham 5y ago
  Le Monde diplomatique is not strictly a news publication but is a rather interesting read. It also has editions in Spanish. If you can read Chinese well enough, some of the Hong Kong press is still quite vibrant and interesting: see e.g. the Hong Kong Economic Journal and Ming Pao (that’s probably about it, alas.) There are some good public broadcasters mentioned in another reply. I’d also recommend the output of Arte (Association relative à la télévision européenne), France Culture, and France Musique. I have occasionally listened to Radio Liban 96.2 to listen to other accents but to be honest the presenters sound like they speak perfect Parisian French to me (if not the interviewees). Some of their programmes are interesting.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- unfunco 5y ago
  You could try BBC Pidgin if you only speak English. https://www.bbc.com/pidgin https://www.bbc.com/pidgin
  - usefulcat 5y ago
    Wow, I had no idea that existed. TIL.
- iamcurious 5y ago
  Any recommendations for italian? edit: I also asked for something international and with only titles, without images, like HN. But reading other comments, I could configure an RSS client for that. So, any news recommendations for italian?
  - eafkuor 5y ago
    https://www.ilpost.it https://www.ilpost.it In my humble opinion, the best Italian news website.
AzzieElbab 5y ago
That is an interesting approach. Being a non native English speaker I sometimes feel that a lot of language games in news do not work on me. It feels a lot like what Scott Adams meant by “watching two different movies on the same screen”
misiti3780 5y ago
This is a great idea!
saint_angels 5y ago
recommendations in simplified Chinese/Mandarin anyone?

fergie 5y ago

"Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about the media we consume: Is this good for me? Is this dense with detailed information? Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time? Is the person writing someone who is well informed on the issue?" Actually, I think most informed people are asking precisely those questions about the media they consume.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
Both can be true.

Dumblydorr 5y ago

In my view, ads are mostly to blame here. Just because the quantity of news is increasing and average quality of news is deteriorating, that does not mean all news is low quality and misinforming. I've read the NYT and NPR for years, they're still fine sources with actual experts and journalists, and they don't rely upon cheap ads. If your goal is information, what you really need to avoid is entertainment masquerading as news. Cable news, YT, many podcasts, many subreddits or forums, they're all ideas submitted with little fact checking and little filter. They're shown to you by algorithms and TV executives because they'll captivate, make you fearful, make you react and keep watching more ads. Is your attention truly worth a couple measly cents of ads to some media corporation?

wombat-man 5y ago
Yeah, stop watching cable news. Take anything news related on social media with a helping of salt. Serious publications are usually more reliable even if they have a little bit of a slant. I also like skimming memeorandum.com since it mainly just shows what people are discussing. Important to know that articles there are popular topics, but not necessarily accurate/objective.
- lame-robot-hoax 5y ago
  This is how I feel. 80% of the news I consume is from AP or Reuters. The rest is probably divided up between The Economist, Axios, and NPR. If I watch the news on TV, which is rare, it’s PBS NewsHour, or local news. I feel like this article is conflating “staying informed” with watching CNN or Fox News 24/7. Or reading obsessively every article published on National Review, NYT, Fox, WaPo, etc. You can still moderately consume more objectively grounded news sources, and stay more informed than if you didn’t at all, while not being addicted to having the news on 24/7.

nobody0 5y ago

Does Hacker News count? I guess frictions matters, our brains constantly seek the shortest path to getting excited. Recently I resorted back to order physical books, and enjoy waiting for the books to arrive.

einpoklum 5y ago
Well, > Second, the cost to produce news has dropped significantly. So, yeah, Hacker News definitely counts... :-(
iamcurious 5y ago
I like the aesthetic and crowd, but it is still a news site made by an incubator behind billion dollar coorporations.

who_in_the_wind 5y ago

I think this speaks more to the issues of trusting online media than specifically the news. The incentives of the web and the incentives of conveying information are not well aligned (for capitalism reasons). > If you must read the news, read it for the facts and the data, not the opinions. This should have been the first sentence. It's not that consuming the news is bad, it's that often the way that it's delivered is emotional (which is sometimes valid, I think) or sensational. I'd also argue, with absolutely no data, that, at least in the US, the shift in how folks consume media in general (low effort, highly emotional) has pushed the news in that direction.

bityard 5y ago
Even if we get past the emotional click-baitey aspect of mass-media news (and also your jab at capitalism), the fact remains that 99% of news is not relevant to the average person's day-to-day life and is wholly _unactionable_. Meaning, there is nothing you can read on the front-page of CNN that we, the people, can do anything about. (I'll carve out a small exception here for pointers to relief funds for disasters, perhaps.) "Staying informed" for its own sake is just a hobby. The most utility you can possibly gain from it is arguing your point of view (politics) with other people online or in real life. Real important events that directly affect me and my family either never hit the mass media, or will be relayed to me through my _actual_ social networks (not facebook or the twitters). National and world trends that might influence my long-term decisions (how to retire, when to invest, etc) don't reveal themselves by reading the news every day, these are things I actively research from time to time via my own means.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
> > If you must read the news, read it for the facts and the data, not the opinions. > This should have been the first sentence. Quality news organizations distinguish between reporting, analysis, and opinion. The author of the piece (and many people in the comments here) seem unaware of this or are just purposefully hopping on the "news is bad" bandwagon. Take a look at the guy's twitter feed and you'll see his bread and butter is incredibly bland "knowledge drops." For example, here's a direct quote of one of his tweets: "Hiring a professional is expensive but hiring an amateur costs a fortune." Any time you see people talking negatively about news organizations (ie "the media"), be on the lookout for fascism, because spreading distrust and disinterest in the news is one of the goals of fascists.

qudat 5y ago

It's really easy to slip into news as entertainment. The same is true for politics. When treated as entertainment, I think it puts the proper perspective on its utility -- dubious.

jaredwiener 5y ago

This really seems like a list of reasons to stop reading low-quality news sources. Not all news is the same.

II2II 5y ago

While many of the points made by this article are valid, it fails to address important questions like: how can we remain informed and how do we decide what is important enough to be informed about? I stopped reading the news on a regular basis many years ago. There were a few reasons for that. One is that most of the news is about topics that we have no control over, another is that news is highly repetitive in nature (few significant events are isolated to a particular day or week). Yet the biggest reason is that much of what is presented as news is actually opinion. While the author suggest separating fact from opinion, that is usually only possible to achieve by reading the news. News outlets may denote a handful of prominent sources as opinion or analysis, but they aren't going to do that for a puffed up piece where the facts alone would barely fill a paragraph. Is my life better for ignoring the news? Probably, but I will also admit that I miss out on many things that I should be informed about.

snarf21 5y ago
I agree with you but today's "news" is really just infotainment designed to outrage. When was the last time you read a headline that wasn't click-bait? The issue is that we want news to match the speed of Twitter and FB. Most people will never go read 4 articles with point/counter about any topic. No one has the time and the world is too complicated. My approach is to wait until I hear enough other people talking about something that maybe I should get up to speed. Otherwise, I don't bother. This will continue until we make fear-mongering less profitable. As you said how do you separate fact from opinion? In some cases, certain details aren't even available. Take the following statement/headline, it is 100% true but likely will invoke different feelings and opinions depending on your position: "Prior to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the President negotiated the release of 400 Taliban leaders from prison". This is super click bait and if you did the research into this statement, you are likely to count it as fake if it disagrees with your current position.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  I just wish as a civilisation we could simply reject "enragement is engagement" for the foul influence it actually is. That entire repulsive concept has done so much harm to society, instead of turning our anger on each-other over opinions that are barely our own to begin with we should reserve it for those who profit from tearing apart the relationships of friends and family by making people as angry as possible in order to consume their content. They're the real cause for anger here, not our neighbours with different opinions. As long as people stick too rigidly to any orthodoxy, there will always be morally weak people willing to sell them firewood to burn their heretics with. In this case, that firewood salesman is simply called "the news industry". What would stop this in its tracks would be to promote a new social attitude that sees the intrinsic worth and dignity in all human beings regardless of their differences, a deeply non-sectarian philosophy that says "you and I disagree and that's okay, neither of us are inherently bad people because of that".

AzzieElbab 5y ago

Removing almost every blue check journalist from my feed certainly improved my Twitter experience. It is no longer about news, it is about stirring sht up. According to the news we have been living in parallel universe for ages

bojangleslover 5y ago

"At some point in the future, news will likely be tailored for you."

beebeepka 5y ago
How about 'news' that will be generated for you. Almost there
- Koshkin 5y ago
  That would be a powerful mind control technique.
Koshkin 5y ago
Like advertisement already is. (Infomercials is a thing.)

badRNG 5y ago

I read the news in part to be entertained, and to have something to talk about with others in the way that sports fans always keep up with new players, stats, and upcoming games. We can all think of low quality, highly polemic news sources that turn our friends and colleagues into absolute monsters, but I'm not talking about that. It's news like HN, stuff from my favorite quirky subreddits and blogs, news in tech and gaming, and a skim of apnews.com & WSJ from time to time. Sometimes when I do stuff I enjoy, I have no further motivation than the enjoyment itself. I'm not under the delusion that keeping up with breaking news is going to help me change the world or become a better citizen or something.

AzzieElbab 5y ago

The news media is so bad in the US, I am seeing alternative news media in development. This new media is dedicated solely to criticism of the old media. Kind of like the original Daily Show but unfunny

javier10e6 5y ago

CNN: Amuse yourself. NYT: Me and my money. WAPO: Them and what used to be my money. LAT: The news, with looks and style that will dazzle.

nanna 5y ago

I think it's possible to stay fairly well informed without becoming a news junkie. Tactics that have worked for me: - RSS feeds for daily news - Weekly summaries from The Week magazine (UK) posted through letterbox. - Fortnightly from serious long reads such as the London Review of Books. - Podcasts from serious research organisations. - Decent books for things I really care about. - Avoid twitter, it's a vampire. - NEVER EVER JUST GO TO THEGUARDIAN.COM TO SEE WHATS GOING ON. (Subscribe to their RSS feeds instead).

eruci 5y ago

So says a website, that immediately asks for my email with the intent of sending me even more news: "Weekly Wisdom You Can Use In 5 minutes. For Free. Enter your email here... Enter your email here... SUBSCRIBE No Spam. Only Timeless Insights."

scbrg 5y ago

Somewhat related, Aaron Swartz' take on news: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews I can't say I agree with him 100%, but he sure has a point.

erikbye 5y ago

If we go back hundreds of years, to the days of the first newspapers, consuming news had more importance. Financially and health-wise. It probably also gave a greater sense of belonging and something to talk about. I'm 40 and I cannot think of a single instance where consuming news (the of the moment, ephemeral kind we're talking about here) saved my ass in some way. It never had a direct effect, not even the extra-extra-read-all-about-it! news. News of critical events, the 22/7 (Norway), 9/11, and gas leak type of events, always reached me through a phone call from a friend or relative before I read about it anywhere. And certainly, other types of news, non-critical events kind, was never important enough to hear about right after or during the occurrence. Then again, I'm not a have-to-watch-it-live kind of guy, I can enjoy the replay. Whether consuming the news causes more stress like some studies claim, I don't know, but I certainly think it a waste of ones time. As for having something to talk about, hell, I have more than enough to talk about without knowing what happened in the world the last few moments, or even yesterday. Not consuming this type of news is not choosing to stay uninformed. I read analysis, editorials, history, etc.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
I never saw news consumption for having something to talk about. Obviously as a voting citizen, my vote ought to be informed. If there is something IO should be outraged about, outraged enough to take to the streets and protest about, I want to know about it. Also, for things like the environment, financial health of the country/world, I like to be able to see trends (or think that I do) and am less likely to be surprised by either a positive or negative turn of events in the future. All that being said, I do not need a daily stream of news — something much more coarse than daily would be more than adequate.

ChrisArchitect 5y ago

anything new on this topic since 2013 you think? Plenty of previous discussion from 3 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099

rossdavidh 5y ago

I recently discovered 1440, a news email which gives you a 5-minute summary of the day's news. They don't know or care how long I spend consuming, so they don't have as much incentive to be melodramatic. I open the email, read it, and that's pretty much it. Much less time, much less melodrama, and if something enormously important happened that day I will still hear about it. It's really a lot more like the financial model and incentives of print newspapers several decades ago. https://join1440.com/ https://join1440.com/ Before you ask, no, I don't work for or have any financial interest.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Anything you know of that is not daily but weekly (and summarizes the week)? I ask because, as the article suggests, a story can change day to day — giving news a week before consuming means you're more likely to get a cogent picture of the event.
- 0xFACEFEED 5y ago
  I read Wikipedia current events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month. I like being able to opt-in.

bityard 5y ago

This is the blog post that inspired me to stop reading mass-media produced news years ago: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-information-diet/ https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-informati...

carbine 5y ago

I used to be a big news consumer. Eventually canceled my NYT sub and quit all national news, except when something major is happening or when I’m about to vote. I read The Economist because it’s one of the last excellent publications and it does seem to help improve my thinking, especially with respect to understanding the macro landscape and investing. But yes, following every Congressional drama is probably a waste of your time. I do think consumption of local news is not a bad idea — that’s the one arena where we could all probably benefit our communities by being more engaged. (Follow the zoning debates, not the murder mysteries.)

dionidium 5y ago
> I do think consumption of local news is not a bad idea — that’s the one arena where we could all probably benefit our communities by being more engaged. (Follow the zoning debates, not the murder mysteries.) The Metro section has always been my favorite part of the local paper and the one I read first on Sunday mornings.
DiggyJohnson 5y ago
The CXO of my massive employer once mentioned that the Economist was the only publication they still subscribed and read diligently. Do you find that yourself preferring the Economist on certain issues, and less strong elsewhere? For some reason I'm really interested in seeing a positive-yet-balanced review or anecdote about print journalism. I think it's the novelty-cheers.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  I prefer the Economist on all Issues. I think they tend to be the most neutral and even if they say something I disagree with, I am able to acknowledge their position and accept the points they are making.
  - carbine 5y ago
    Agreed, they’re consistently excellent on all issues. One minute you’re learning about Chinese domestic policy, the next you’re going deep on advances in particle physics. And they’re underrated for their humour —- occasionally there’s a bone dry joke in there. Probably part of what makes it great is that journalists don’t put their names on their columns. Articles are pretty much all written with the same rigorously specific tone, and if they share an opinion they make it clear that’s what they’re doing and they generally do so on behalf of the magazine. It’s about the journalism, not anyone’s Twitter following.

User23 5y ago

As a general rule the national news is intended to persuade and is only informative if persuasion happens to require it. This becomes extremely obvious when one compares the national news to the local news. The latter is relatively more concerned with informing than persuading. This was particularly clear during the 2020 protests where the national news was observably tasked with persuading viewers that these were legitimate (mostly) peaceful protests and not violent riots. Meanwhile, the local news where events were occurring provided the exceedingly valuable service of keeping people continually informed via airborne footage about where they might prefer to not go at the time.

tootie 5y ago

I think the real advice is here "don't be irrational" and it's easier said than done. News sources obviously vary in quality and even the best are run by fallible humans so you're never fully safe. But really being informed is a net positive. So I think it's pretty silly to live in ignorance because you can't be trusted with more information.

tester34 5y ago

not that long time ago I wrote this on HN >but what's the point of watching(/reading) news? why bother? >It's poor deal, it's not worth. >Just because I may learn some small things that probably do not affect me directly and additionally receive some news that make my mood worse due to hearing some yet another negative news about bad stuff / politics / yada yada, what's the point? >80% of the news I read is HN and some programming related websites and whenever I jump into "mainstream" media, then I feel like I'm reading some shit - click baits, tragedies, controversial stuff, drama seeking, celebrities >it's irrelevant for me https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27433589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27433589 now, if I just managed to drop HN and Reddit then I'd be free I guess I'd have to change career.

karaterobot 5y ago

As the world gets crazier, people consume more news about it. I'd been talking to a smarter person than myself about this topic, and he observed that the causality may be in the other direction. That idea makes some sense. I know that, in my life, worrying too much and too intensely about something makes me edgy and drive me down cul-de-sacs. It's not unbelievable to me that something like that could happen on the scale of a whole culture, and if it did, it might look a lot like the world we're living in.

Koshkin 5y ago

… except Hacker News!

thatjoeoverthr 5y ago

I stopped reading news. Often, it just looks like gaslighting. When I read content on a topic I’m familiar with, it’s clear that many journalists don’t even Google things they cover. But most importantly, it isn’t actionable. It’s inactionable stress. Consider elections. When I get a voting card, I can just look up the candidates or choices when I have the most information. Frivolous minutia like ice cream scandals (Trump and Pelosi have both had ice cream scandals!) doesn’t even show up. Frankly my experience of the world is drastically different without letting an entire industry wind me up on purpose. People I know personally who are overexposed to the news look, to me, like they have been mentally poisoned. There is a kind of rage and demoralization. Left or right wing. They’re just wound up by different people. It’s frankly disturbing. I don’t have a solution to everything. But aside from researching when things are actionable, one thing we have in Poland is the government just texts you sometimes. For example I’d get a text whenever they’d change the covid lockdown rules. Maybe that’s a good lead. Some kind of actionability oriented news aggregator with push notifications. Maybe I should code that.

p5v 5y ago

I know this will sound like a product pitch, but please, bear with me. One of the reasons we set out to create our service Murmel(https://murmel.social/ https://murmel.social/) was because we were pissed off reading the same crappy story retold by ten different sources. On top of it all, each story tells you the version its author wants you to see, but rarely shows you all sides of the picture. What we wanted to give people was a little bit more context. We wanted to abstract away from stories being distinctly left or right-wing. Instead, we simply ranked the stories that a large group of people on Twitter thinks we should be reading, and mashed the Twitter discussion into each story. This way at least, you can tell from the discussion whether a story is worth reading: https://murmel.social/top https://murmel.social/top

fortran77 5y ago

I find once a week news reading is the best bet. Read the Weekend WSJ, the Sunday NY Times, and a couple of weekly publications. This way you're not chasing and getting aggravated over the news cycle.

jancsika 5y ago

Me: I saw some interesting comments by Alan Kay on HN. Troll: HN is garbage. Quit reading it. Mutatis mutandis for the author's article. If you have so little idea of how to assess journalists' output over time that you don't even think to mention it in a critique of news, then you haven't really started to read the news yet. Edit: ah, lemme protect against accusations of No True Scotsman: the author is literally reading the news but is doing so in a superficial manner that an intro civics class would correct.

WaitWaitWha 5y ago

I think the key part is in there somewhere. There is a caveat here I presume for all these posts. Few of you are writing about work related, industry news. Not all news is relevant to me, as they do not impact my day-to-day life or I can do very little about it. These news are a rarely worth consuming. As others have noted, relevance and impact. Now, I have to go and formalize my mental model of news filtering...

pauljonas 5y ago

But democracy dies in darkness!

cafard 5y ago

Should we stop reading news, or stop reading opinions and reactions to news? One of the things about a print newspaper is the way that it brings in everything from local school board decisions to elections halfway across the globe. Of course, real news is the most expensive to gather, so it has tended to suffer over the years.

cortexio 5y ago

Reminds me of a belgian docu-like tv show, where a group started sending fake news articles to belgian media over a 2 year span. It just straight out worked. It was so easy and they didnt even try really. It was all a joke to them. Anyway, it was good television. In the end they got caught though. And all the media orgs were making articles saying that what they did, was unacceptable... instead of being dissapointed in their lack of checking sources. It's just sad. just stop reading news. It's worthless.

freediver 5y ago

"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. [....] The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter." ― Aleister Crowley "I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me." ― Ralph Waldo Emerson Few more great resources on this topic: https://tinygem.org/about/#stopnews https://tinygem.org/about/#stopnews

yboris 5y ago

News do not give you an accurate picture of the world. Almost by definition, if something is statistically average (happens all the time) it is not news. So seeing all the murderers on TV makes people think there is more of it going on than if they simply looked at the statistics.

dionidium 5y ago

I'll repeat what I always say whenever this comes up: subscribe to the Sunday edition of a major city daily. If your city doesn't have a very good one, then just do the New York Times (but note that the Metro section is one of the most interesting and useful parts of the daily paper and you'll miss out on that if you subscribe to a national paper). You want the Sunday edition because it's the week's largest edition and contains stories that ran earlier in the week, plus sections that aren't in the weekday editions. And you probably want real paper. The idea is to scan through it from beginning to end, getting an idea of what the major stories are and what's broadly happening in the world. Read it over coffee or while watching football or whatever. Anything more than this is entertainment. It's not important and won't make you more informed. If you want to read more than that because you like it, then that's fine. Some people like The Bachelor. But they don't confuse it for an education. It's entertainment.

mrkramer 5y ago

Then I wouldn't know how much they lie to me.

socialleaf 5y ago

It's important to understand that there's only one news. Rest everything that different news outlets publish are perspectives. It's a classic example of the elephant and 10 blind men. A news is a one time event observed in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person perspective. When news outlets start acting as businesses, the need for differentiation leads them to dig out the different interpretations of the same event and report those that have higher probability of capturing public attention. Reading multiple interpretations of the same news could feel like something really big and noteworth has happened. In effect, it's the same news being reported everywhere.

nicholascloud 5y ago

In a similar vein, I recommend Neil Postman's book "How to Watch TV News". It's a little dated, but his recommendations are still relevant to modern media formats. One of his most interesting (and obvious in hindsight) insights is that "news" is NOT what is happening around you; it's what someone else TELLS YOU is happening around you, based on a complex set of criteria that they use to prioritize, include, and exclude information, and is not in any way comprehensive. This is necessary due to the limits of communication, but can also have profound effects on the impressions we then carry with us regarding what we think about the world around us. The book is short, but rich; I highly recommend it.