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I've settled on periodically glancing at NYT headlines, but with a very high bar for whether to actually click and read the article. If you've read the news for

I've settled on periodically glancing at NYT headlines, but with a very high bar for whether to actually click and read the article. If you've read the news for long enough, you can develop a spider sense for whether they have anything new to say. To oversimplify - if they had anything new to say, they'd put it in the headline. So if the headline has no news, i.e. if it sounds like something you could reasonably predict based on your existing knowledge, the rest of the article has no news either. Example 1, no news: this morning, nytimes.com has the headline "Pressure Grows on U.S. Companies to Share Covid Vaccine Technology". Does it make sense that people want Moderna and Pfizer to share their Covid vaccine secrets? Sure, that's not news. Is it likely that "pressure grows" actually means anything specific and important? No, because if it did, they'd put it in the headline. Most likely, this article is just a boilerplate reminder of how people still want Moderna and Pfizer to share their Covid vaccine technology, and how mad they are that they're not sharing it. So I don't read the article. (Feel free to read it and correct me if I'm wrong!) Example 2, real news: on the right half of the page on nytimes.com, there is a much smaller headline which says "Moderna vs. Pfizer: Both vaccines are highly effective, but one seems to be more protective over the long term." Which one is it? I have no idea! Worth a click. (This is an example of good clickbait: credibly signaling you have something worth saying without saying it right away.) Also, there's no point in being constantly reminded of bad things you can't do anything about. Like, yes, I know bad things are happening in Afghanistan. I vote against people who support pointless wars. I don't know what else to do about it. So I don't let it take up space in my life. With these filters your counterproductive news consumption can be cut by up to 99% without the feeling of missing out. Things that I speculate might help further, but I haven't actually tried: - Reading a wire service's website like Reuters or AP instead of NYT - Relying on local news. I don't because paywall, but I'd probably benefit more from knowing what's going on in my community

wintermutestwin 5y ago
This is what I use to headline scan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
- civilized 5y ago
  This reminds me how jarring it is to read a non-US-centric view on world news when I've habituated myself to US-centric sources.
BeetleB 5y ago
> I've settled on periodically glancing at NYT headlines, but with a very high bar for whether to actually click and read the article. I can't speak to the NYT in particular, but in my experience, the headlines are often more misleading than the article. Mostly overly exaggerated, but I found several cases where the headline was false, and the article had the truth. The lesson I learned is that perusing headlines is more likely to make on misinformed.

wintermutestwin 5y ago

This is what I use to headline scan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

civilized 5y ago
This reminds me how jarring it is to read a non-US-centric view on world news when I've habituated myself to US-centric sources.

BeetleB 5y ago

> I've settled on periodically glancing at NYT headlines, but with a very high bar for whether to actually click and read the article. I can't speak to the NYT in particular, but in my experience, the headlines are often more misleading than the article. Mostly overly exaggerated, but I found several cases where the headline was false, and the article had the truth. The lesson I learned is that perusing headlines is more likely to make on misinformed.