3 ms·

> So little of the news is actionable, as the article points out. The only remotely actionable news for me is what’s happening in my local community; but the gr

by tivert 3y ago

> So little of the news is actionable, as the article points out. The only remotely actionable news for me is what’s happening in my local community; but the gradual demise of our local newspaper has made that difficult to track. > Yes, the news - national and international- shows trends that an ordinary person could act on; but not in the rapid cycles that define modern news presentation. I believe Tyler Cowen once remarked we’d be better off reading far more history than about current events. Honestly, I chafe a little bit at expecting the news to be "actionable" by a regular person, because I think there's some general value to being informed about your environment (especially in a democracy). However so much of modern news is neither, it's more akin to feelings-based political advertising. It's so bad that it's obvious even on the news pages of prestige outlines like the New York Times. I subscribe to their app, but I have to do a fair bit of eye rolling as I'm searching for informative things, and they're just making it harder. They've been pushing their "Opinion" section even more heavily: in the last few months they moved it up to the 2nd section after "Most Popular, knocking World News down to 3rd (or more accurately 3rd/4th since they've also stuck "Games" of all things in the 2nd slot). One sad casualty of modern times is the weekly news magazine. The slower pace and longer deadlines meant they were much better at keeping a regular person informed without all the noise of daily updates. They were also more accurate than daily news, since they weren't as rushed they could do better fact checking and research.

avgcorrection 3y ago
> Honestly, I chafe a little bit at expecting the news to be "actionable" by a regular person, because I think there's some general value to being informed about your environment (especially in a democracy). What democracy? The News is kind of like so-called democracy: something that every serious person needs to do but that has very little impact on anything. The most exaggerated example is the US presidential election which in fact has a very, very long media coverage (News) up until the election itself. And what does a person who can vote get back from that? They only have two parties that they can vote for if they don’t want to “waste” their vote, and the nomination is filled with a mix of serious candidates and people who want to boost their careers (Buttigieg) and then eventually the party itself circle the wagons and boosts one anointed candidate (that was the case for the Dems but I’m not sure about the Reps since I didn’t pay much attention). One counter-example though to the News not being actionable was Covid. I felt that a lot of the news about Covid was actionable. And it was useful to know what people/experts thought about the current threat-level day-to-day.
akiselev 3y ago
Nowadays I’ve eschewed most media sources beyond three primary ones: BBC World News channel, Foreign Policy magazine, and Wikipedia current events portal [1] The BBC channel only produces a few hours of news a day but manages to cover everything from the Titan sub to French protests to Israel’s anti-terrorism action in Jenin to Bolsonaro’s ban. They’re pretty much the only news source that reliably covers Latam, Africa, and the Middle East. They’ve got a rather predictable bias and a half hour a day is enough to get a broad view of what’s happening. FP is great for deeper analysis from the perspective of the neoliberal establishment and its primary competitors. However to stay informed the only thing I feel I really need is the Wikipedia current events portal. Past days are updated as information comes in so I can go back when I have time and grab any headlines that I missed. It’s actually surprising how few eventful events actually happen in the world when you get rid of all the ragebait. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
colonCapitalDee 3y ago
> One sad casualty of modern times is the weekly news magazine. The slower pace and longer deadlines meant they were much better at keeping a regular person informed without all the noise of daily updates. They were also more accurate than daily news, since they weren't as rushed they could do better fact checking and research. The Economist is still going strong. It's my primary news source for exactly these reasons

by tivert 3y ago

avgcorrection 3y ago

> Honestly, I chafe a little bit at expecting the news to be "actionable" by a regular person, because I think there's some general value to being informed about your environment (especially in a democracy). What democracy? The News is kind of like so-called democracy: something that every serious person needs to do but that has very little impact on anything. The most exaggerated example is the US presidential election which in fact has a very, very long media coverage (News) up until the election itself. And what does a person who can vote get back from that? They only have two parties that they can vote for if they don’t want to “waste” their vote, and the nomination is filled with a mix of serious candidates and people who want to boost their careers (Buttigieg) and then eventually the party itself circle the wagons and boosts one anointed candidate (that was the case for the Dems but I’m not sure about the Reps since I didn’t pay much attention). One counter-example though to the News not being actionable was Covid. I felt that a lot of the news about Covid was actionable. And it was useful to know what people/experts thought about the current threat-level day-to-day.

akiselev 3y ago

Nowadays I’ve eschewed most media sources beyond three primary ones: BBC World News channel, Foreign Policy magazine, and Wikipedia current events portal [1] The BBC channel only produces a few hours of news a day but manages to cover everything from the Titan sub to French protests to Israel’s anti-terrorism action in Jenin to Bolsonaro’s ban. They’re pretty much the only news source that reliably covers Latam, Africa, and the Middle East. They’ve got a rather predictable bias and a half hour a day is enough to get a broad view of what’s happening. FP is great for deeper analysis from the perspective of the neoliberal establishment and its primary competitors. However to stay informed the only thing I feel I really need is the Wikipedia current events portal. Past days are updated as information comes in so I can go back when I have time and grab any headlines that I missed. It’s actually surprising how few eventful events actually happen in the world when you get rid of all the ragebait. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

colonCapitalDee 3y ago

> One sad casualty of modern times is the weekly news magazine. The slower pace and longer deadlines meant they were much better at keeping a regular person informed without all the noise of daily updates. They were also more accurate than daily news, since they weren't as rushed they could do better fact checking and research. The Economist is still going strong. It's my primary news source for exactly these reasons