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Delayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'

337 points by speerer 2mo ago

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
bearjaws 2mo ago
This is really what a lot of people need, a return to learning about something 2-3 weeks after it happens and more details are known. I have often thought about with my friends who are "terminally online" that they would benefit from NOT being a town crier from times gone by. Many of my friends hate Twitter, hate Elon and hate social media, but because they have to be first to all the latest news, they remain locked in to Twitter day in and day out. They cannot quit. They are socially bound to them because being the person to start a topic on whats happened in Ukraine, who was traded to the Dolphins, etc is part of their socialization. It's been baffling to me, as I simply don't see the value in being the "first" to discuss some news, especially if its misinformation. Anyway, all that to say that I think is a great idea and would really benefit society to return back to less "real time" news, which really tends to drown out the big topics in favor of buzz words and Twitter quips.
- pixel_popping 2mo ago
  Most people clearly don't benefit from watching the news, tech news is a bit different but regular news are quite useless in general and plain toxic, I frankly advise everyone to take a break from reading the news altogether, maybe do it once a week, stay informed by other means, you won't miss anything, you'll improve your energy and mental health.
- 45h45h4h 2mo ago
  one of the first commenters commenting about not being first - irony
  - mikestew 2mo ago
    https://lowres.cartooncollections.com/all_or_nothing_fallacy-logical_fallacies-fallacies-hypocrisy-hypocrites-politics-NB900212_low.jpg https://lowres.cartooncollections.com/all_or_nothing_fallacy...
    - rjyjfjftjt 2mo ago
      I don't think it's a gotcha to point out it's ironic to literally be the thing someone is complaining about. Further irony, your gotcha is like exactly the point the comic is trying to make. It's like you were made by God to demonstrate failure.
  - bearjaws 2mo ago
    It is funny I just happened to refresh HN on a break and this was trending with no comments.
- sedawkgrep 2mo ago
  > This is really what a lot of people need, a return to learning about something 2-3 weeks after it happens and more details are known. I agree. Aside from emergencies or other truly circumstance-changing news, I am not sure there's really any value in being immediately informed vs. days or perhaps even weeks later. I just hadn't thought in these terms before. I can't help but imagine how much healthier our society would be...
  - SoftTalker 2mo ago
    We don't have a local newspaper anymore but there are a couple of bloggers who follow city council meetings and other local happenings. I read those fairly frequently. National/world news I have stopped following at all, as 99.5% of it doesn't affect me and I have no influence over any of it.
    - sedawkgrep 2mo ago
      Doesn’t the saying go something like “all politics are local” ?
- keyringlight 2mo ago
  I think proximity is a good measure, what different types of news do you need to know and will impact your decision making on different time scales? There's probably a very small amount of things I really need to know (practically) instantly, regional/national/continental/global news might be interesting to be summarized daily/weekly/monthly, but even then it will be different subsets where it affects me or is little more than trivia and will be forgotten quickly as I have little connection to it.
ainch 2mo ago
It's heartening to see that Delayed Gratification has successfully continued their work for so long. I used to work at Tortoise (who now own/operate The Observer) and our motto was 'Slow News'. We operated on a pretty transparent membership model, but I got the impression that it was difficult to make pure membership work financially, leading to a reliance on other revenue streams like podcasting and business partnerships over time.
setopt 2mo ago
Sounds very appealing. Anyone here have experience with it? If I want to try it, should I go print or digital? How is the writing compared to say The Economist or other more mainstream options?
- datakan 2mo ago
  Also interested in what their biases may be. Being "slow" isn't really enough, they also need to be fair and honest.
  - speerer 2mo ago
    Having subscribeed for years, I find it very good on that front. I haven't detected any political bias, and I suspect they would say that fairness and honesty is what the "journalism" half of "slow journalism" means.
- dwedge 2mo ago
  How is the economist these days? Around a decade ago I read it cover to cover every week for 18 months, but during the brexkt referendum they seemed to go into a tantrum and half of the magazine was always about how brexit was 100% a bad thing. Even if I agreed with them I don't like "100%" biased news because at some point it's like propaganda. I understand they were started in support of trade deals but even so. Has it improved?
  - LVB 2mo ago
    I've lapsed my subscription because it has, in my opinion, gotten a bit too clickbait-y and many of the articles are sort of thin rehashes of already covered material. It is still better than most, but also fairly pricy.
  - Seattle3503 2mo ago
    It seems fine now
  - carlosjobim 2mo ago
    You mean "The E-Communist"?
abound 2mo ago
I've been building something similar for my own purposes. Basically, I use Calibre's "Fetch News" functionality to get epubs of all the news sources I trust, and then once a month (interval is configurable), I run a pipeline over all of it (some LLM magic, partly local partly API) to dedupe and rank stories, then compile it into an actual honest-to-goodness newspaper (using Typst for layout and stuff), then read that at my leisure.
- kristerv 2mo ago
  The what now. But not all sources have epubs, right? Is there any one that you're missing now?
  - advisedwang 2mo ago
    Calibre has a feature that will fetch a rss feed or (IIRC) scrape a site and make an epub from it.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - imhoguy 2mo ago
    epub is ZIP with HTML+CSS+images+some metadata.
  - abound 2mo ago
    Nope! Every source I care about either has an RSS feed, or I've been able to make a custom recipe [1] to handle things like auth for paid sites and whatnot. [1] https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/glossary.html#term-recipe https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/glossary.html#term-recipe
- sheesdev 2mo ago
  This sounds really interesting and something I'd love to try. Do you have more details on how someone else can utilise this?
  - 2mo ago
aaron695 2mo ago
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freakynit 2mo ago
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hampelm 2mo ago
I'd love a breaking news service that gives me the latest headlines -- but only if they are still true 2 weeks later.
- FerretFred 2mo ago
  Agreed, and chances are that due to the nature of the event bring reported, we as readers are unable to influence it in sny way. Therefore a couple of weeks delay will make mo difference.
parpfish 2mo ago
the twenty-four hour news cycle's unyielding need for urgent content has broken many people psychologically and we need to 'deprogram' them. i've often thought about making a site that lets you easily do side-by-side comparisons of news sites on different timescales (1 week, 1 month, 1 year) so you can pull it up and show them "see all this stuff that you feel like you NEED to consume? like it makes you a better informed member of society? how much of it actually mattered and how much of it was just there to hook you in the moment?"
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- colechristensen 2mo ago
  A well informed population is important. The problem is they're not well informed they're well-hooked to whatever exaggeration and drama the news can whip up. The invented news and invented intensity is the problem.
  - ReactiveJelly 2mo ago
    "hooked" is right. I'm trying to tell people, you have to take initiative, you have to have agency and be responsible for your own attention. If you are being "fed" from a "feed" you are being fattened for slaughter
- Brendinooo 2mo ago
  I just wanna throw in that Tangle News[0] strikes a pretty good balance here. Their core offering is detailed breakdowns of what is generally regarded as the top four stories of the week, one a day from Monday through Thursday, which is usually more than enough space to keep you "up on current events", and they usually (though not always) tend to give enough space to let stories develop before summarizing. They're a good fit on your "one week" timescale. [0]: https://www.readtangle.com/ https://www.readtangle.com/
  - T1ny 2mo ago
dwedge 2mo ago
Delayed gratification in my case was going through three captchas before I could even read the advert for a magazine. I know it's common but that disrespect for the customer irks me. How do people here find the content, is it worth trying again?
- bcraven 2mo ago
  if you like print journalism they're a good option with great print quality
  - dwedge 2mo ago
    Thank you. I'll give them a try, if recommended I can forgive captchas because most companies don't really think about the negative user experience and it's unfair to punish one
ChrisArchitect 2mo ago
highlighting this as 'slow journalism' is a bit odd - it's a magazine, there are lots of them, quarterly etc. The slowness is a given, the delay is the feature.
- jrmg 2mo ago
  This magazine only covers stories that are at least three months old.
kridsdale3 2mo ago
In this spirit, I prefer to not read any online news, or daily newspaper, but the weekly Economist in print. It has higher quality writing than all the rest, has a built in capacitor buffer against high frequency low signal bullshit (noise) by virtue of being weekly, and contains all the information about the world that mattered in that time period. Zero engagement bait because it's an expensive subscription.
- probst 2mo ago
  I have been a long time subscriber to the economist for the same reason. The print edition is great and keeps me feeling informed. If only it wouldn’t include the digital edition too… Invariably, the more stressed I get in my everyday life by work and small children and lack of sleep, the more I get dragged towards the online edition of the economist, and BAM I’m back in the constant instant news cycle again, even though the site doesn’t update that often. My latest life hack which I can recommend to anyone, at least in Germany: as part of my local library membership I get access to the PressReader app, which gives me access to the print edition of the economist! At 10 EUR a year it’s so affordable it nearly feels like it’s unethically so for what I get. I guess I’ll close with: May we forever be blessed with libraries, and may they never be „optimised away“ as an unnecessary social good.
- thegrim33 2mo ago
  I haven't read or engaged in mainstream media in over 15 years now. I just pulled up the Economist website for fun to see what's on it. I see stories that have absolutely nothing to do with me or the country (e.g. an article gushing about how China managed to stop massively polluting one of their rivers. In what universe is that remotely relevant to me? Why is this the front page story?), I see the typical biased articles and bias in choosing what to report on, everything all biased politically the same way (of course, if you hold the same biases then you don't see the bias, it all just just looks normal/neutral/true to you), I see stories increasing the fear and hate in the world (China has a scary secretive shadowy maritime militia! Oil markets are scary right now! Be afraid!), there's absolutely nothing of interest to me. Guess I'll go another 15.
- the_sleaze_ 2mo ago
losvedir 2mo ago
Interesting. I wonder where the "sweet spot" on the delay is. I've given up online news and twitter and all that entirely, and just read my print Economist, which comes weekly. That already has the news somewhat delayed and presumably with less of a rush to report has a little more fact checking. This advertises up to a 3 month delay. I do like that with that much lead time you can see not just news but sometimes a bit of the fallout and consequences. Not a fan of the name, though. It reads like those Claude comments that I absolutely despise, where it feels the need to comment in a reactionary way to the feedback it's getting and changes it's making, rather than a forward-looking way that's cohesive with the new state of the codebase. Maybe I missed it, but is there a back issue available I could page through, or even just a full story somewhere, that I could read so I can evaluate what I think of it?
- speerer 2mo ago
  Luckily the magazine came long before Claude, but I suppose your comparison describes their mission pretty well. It's a haven of non-AI writing.
akurilin 2mo ago
I enjoyed this magazine and subscribed to it for a while, but I wish there was a US-centered version of it for those of us on this side of the pond.
petercooper 2mo ago
I was subscribed to this. It's beautifully designed, well written, good paper stock, the works. If the idea appeals to you, it's worth trying. Ultimately, it didn't work for me, but that's my fault. Despite my best intentions, it turned out I wasn't interested in reading about world affairs beyond the news cycle.
- Seattle3503 2mo ago
  Did they show the same news as everyone, but later? That seems like it doesn't fully leverage the format. The format seems like it would be good for things that are subtle and got overlooked at the time. But I guess maybe the normal news cycle can surface those same things when they reach a breaking point.
  - petercooper 2mo ago
    It's been several years (and the issues are in my office so I could take a look later) but I recall it was a mix. They'd sometimes group big stories together thematically (like when all the billionaires were starting to get into space) but also do longer-term reflections on single, complex stories like the Salisbury Novichok incident. I don't recall it really surfacing things that didn't make the news cycle, but one thing I failed to mention is they had (have?) really good infographics/visualizations! They have a lot of the more recent ones here https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/infographics https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/infographics
    - nzealand 2mo ago
      This is exactly correct. Here is what the latest issue covers: His exfiltration of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was swift, effective and - as we found in our follow-up reporting - surprisingly popular among Venezuelans (plo). But then the 47th president threw himself into a new venture, a major attack on Iran. Far from being a surgical strike à la Caracas, it rapidly spiralled into a regional conflagration which threatened to blast the global economy off its hinges. We have analysed the build-up and fall-out of the Iran war in forensic detail in an infographic extravaganza (p70). While Trump loomed large throughout the quarter, adding an Ice operation in Minneapolis (p30) and unseemly wranglings over Greenland (p50) into the headline-grabbing mix, his was not the only game in town. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested (P66), a football final turned into theatrical chaos (p40), the power of Al gave hope to sufferers of ultra-rare diseases (p80) and victory was declared over ferrets on a Northern Irish island (p100). Meanwhile Nasa scientists announced fascinating revelations drawn from their analysis of a thimbleful of space dust obtained at great expense from a four billion-year-old asteroid (p56). edit: you can see some samples on their website: https://www.slow-journalism.com/back-issue/62-jan-mar-2026 https://www.slow-journalism.com/back-issue/62-jan-mar-2026
johnhamlin 2mo ago
I generally wait for a story to get a full feature in The New Yorker or The Atlantic before I give it my attention. Similar concept
rzk 2mo ago
[dead]
networked 2mo ago
I learned about Delayed Gratification when someone linked "The last of the Flying Wallendas" (https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazine/the-last-of-the-flying-wallendas https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazi...) in a chatroom. In the spirit of the magazine, I set a reminder to read it in a year. I decided to do it again when the reminder triggered. A total of three years later, it was a good article.
hamper653 2mo ago
Does this publication assume prior basic knowledge of the past months’ events?
rdmuser 2mo ago
They had their 15th birthday late last year: https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazine/dg15birthday https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazi... If you feel interested in following them but it feels too high traffic or chaotic you can follow specific categories with rss by just going to subcategories on the website and adding /feed to the end of the url. Even slower journalism! For example I follow the long reads one: https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/long-reads/feed https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/long-reads/feed You can do that trick with a lot of sites. One of your old faves started pumping out listicles but still puts out good stuff here and there? Might be worth seeing if those higher quality articles have their own categories with feeds.
openasocket 2mo ago
One thing that has really frustrated me with "mainstream media" in the last few years is that the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decline. I feel like half of the news articles are just a collection of quotes from officials or politicians in public statements, being regurgitated without any additional effort. Outrageous claims are just taken at face value, or at best just put alongside quotes from other officials/politicians saying the opposite. As an example, how many times has the strait of Hormuz been declared open by the US, when it turns out it really wasn't? And every time these low-effort articles just echo that statement without even trying to evaluate if that is true. I mean, the transponder data on shipping is publicly available, there's a dozen websites you could use to actually see passage through the strait to verify the claim. If you don't do even the most basic follow ups, is that even a news article? Or is it just a more elaborate form of re-tweeting?
- dmoy 2mo ago
  This is not exactly a new criticism. See e.g. Fisk's complaint from decades ago r.e. "US Officials Say" https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-farcical-end-of-the-american-dream-6106419.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/rober...
  - andy_ppp 2mo ago
    How can we measure if things are worse now? Potentially asking/training an LLM on news stories from different eras might be a fairer comparison than human intelligence at this point.
- fyltr 2mo ago
  isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? I am not old enough to be able to compare to what journalism might once have been, but it seems that the current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases. Also, I often hear stuff like: don't put too much weight on what X says, he was wrong about Y. Lower journalist wages, a need for immediate reporting that undermines in-depth research and risking your own rep every time you put more than 'facts' out there just don't give any incentive to do more than pick out the quotes you want to use.
Barrin92 2mo ago
I wonder how much news related issues have to do with the way news is presented rather than the frequency at which you read the news. Daily news reading doesn't strike me as concerning given that getting a newspaper delivered in the mail in the morning was entirely normal practice and people didn't seem to experience the distress they do now. Between the 20s and up until the 70s almost every American household subscribed to a daily newspaper. I figure the fact that news has turned into hedonic consumption is the much bigger deal. Neil Postman wrote a book, Amusing Ourselves to Death outlining how mass media turned all programming into entertainment programming. Everything is stimulating, emotionally charged etc. That to me seems to be the exhausting part. So as for the title of this publication people really seem to be into the "delayed" part but I think the "gratification" part might be the problem
FerretFred 2mo ago
The apparent need by the Media to keep issuing constant updates and then suddenly having to retract the story is very frustrating. Each "update" is usually slighly incremental and is invariably a short new paragraph tacked into the previous version. The final version of the story being covered is often a mea culpa retraction because earlier versions were rushed and inaccurate. I'm trying very hard to escape this destructive cycle but it's not easy.
munk-a 2mo ago
It turns out there are a few stories that are important to be immediately aware of (declarations of war, local events like service outages or celebration - and only if they're planned with short notice). Most of the rest of the news is important for the purpose of holding people to account but outside the influence of regular people. We can live in a society where a massive scandal happens and it takes two months for the systems and mechanisms to respond to it. I genuinely believe that most stories are better delivered with full information and nuance well after the event occurs than immediately.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- piker 2mo ago
  Nassim Taleb has a note about this idea in one of his books. Essentially just pointing out how unimportant most news headlines are a few years out.
  - bandofthehawk 2mo ago
    If you are interested, Daniel Boorstin wrote about similar ideas much earlier in The Image.
    - exq 2mo ago
      Another one: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
- smoe 2mo ago
  15 years after making the decision, while working for a major news outlet, to no longer read “the news,” I can pretty confidently say: if something is important enough for you to know, it will reach you eventually anyway. Consuming news has little to do with being informed. Quite the opposite, at times.
  - watwut 2mo ago
whatever1 2mo ago
My problem is the opposite. When there are breaking news directly affecting me I have no way of getting them. In between a myriad of notifications, fake social media posts, total collapse of local radio and tv, I have no idea of how to stay informed.
misiti3780 2mo ago
This is a great idea (although it probably exists in other places) I'm reminded of Taleb's (2) https://stevenbagley.net/blog/taleb-signal-to-noise.html https://stevenbagley.net/blog/taleb-signal-to-noise.html
something98 2mo ago
Similar to the longer cycle times, I'm curious if there is the equivalent for HN. I like this site, https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/, but it's once-per-day. I'd at least like once-per-week.
- jrmg 2mo ago
  You’re in luck! https://buttondown.com/hacker-newsletter/archive/ https://buttondown.com/hacker-newsletter/archive/
- cperciva 2mo ago
  I'm guessing you want https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly/ https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly/ then?
  - something98 2mo ago
    yup. didn't know it was there
tomhow 2mo ago
Previously: Delayed Gratification – The Slow Journalism Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32222831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32222831 - July 2022 (16 comments) Delayed Gratification: A Slow Journalism Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200573 - Jan 2020 (23 comments)
LoganDark 2mo ago
For a really long time, I've wanted a way to know just about products that have already actually released, rather than exciting innovations that'll be in the lab for years. I haven't really had that problem with news.
shelled 2mo ago
I cancelled the subscription because I just couldn't connect its stories ever. such was their choices. Not just the subjects and how the stories were from physically so far that I felt it was an exercise in compulsion on my part. I wasn't a fan of the writing style either. Besides, at some point it started to feel like news and journalism were not centre stage, being "delayed" and different were.
mttch 2mo ago
Was a long term subscriber, now just a podcast listener: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/delayed-gratification-the-slow-news-podcast/id1881613386 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/delayed-gratification-...
- velcrovan 2mo ago
  As someone curious about subscribing: why did you end your subscription?
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
rch 2mo ago
Legible News has a weekly edition for subscribers: https://legiblenews.com/week https://legiblenews.com/week
mdp2021 2mo ago
The RSS is hidden (to my checks) but there and working: https://www.slow-journalism.com/blog/rss https://www.slow-journalism.com/blog/rss
surfsvammel 2mo ago
I used to be a subscriber of Delayed Gratification. And I really enjoyed it. But, I’m based in Sweden and it was just too much UK focused stuff for my liking.
mfallon 2mo ago
I think it depends on how you follow it. If you're strategic and surgical about it, breaking news keeps you informed. If it's a routine, if the TV is on all day waiting for something to break, that ultimately makes you sadder and is worse for you.
insane_dreamer 2mo ago
everything these days is "breaking news!" -- I've come to hate that moniker, and sometimes actively ignore anything tagged as such. It goes without saying that I stopped watching TV news years ago--it's pretty much garbage.
vasco 2mo ago
I just don't read any news other than if they show up here or someone in my life tells me. And even then that's way too many news. There's really not a need for any news, if it wasn't by now a 15 year old addiction to come to this site I'd be even happier with even less news. Whoever says you'll not be a productive member of society or that you NEED to know current events to participate, just tell them they're wrong, they're miserable anyway.
choult 2mo ago
I am so glad to see these guys get some well-deserved attention! I worked with the founders Marcus and Rob, and met their infographics whizz Christian waay back when they were kicking this off. I was blown away by it then, and I continue to be blown away now. Here's to the next 15 years!
duxup 2mo ago
The best news articles I read on sites like NYT and so on are the ones that come weeks or even months after the events. So much more informative.
- wackget 2mo ago
  But then how do you make knee-jerk reactions on social media to vilify those who hold politically opposite views to yours?
wraptile 2mo ago
I've been subscribed to Delayed Gratification for a year now and really enjoy it. Brilliant editorial with beautiful and easily digestible infographics. My only gripe is that at times it's a bit too UK centric at times, but I guess it's understandable this being a UK-based publisher.
petrev01 2mo ago
Current subscriber and big fan here! I honestly just wish they would dial down the infographics and bring a few more long form articles each magazine.
BrandoElFollito 2mo ago
I would love to have something like this for HN, a RSS feed with articles over 5 hours (5 hours because it is old enough to have comments which are often more interesting that the article, and fresh enough to get a reaction on a comment follow-up)
reindeer2 2mo ago
[flagged]
Magicrafter13 2mo ago
Cute idea, and I do think that we have way too much on our news feeds constantly, however, I don't think making news a quarterly ordeal is the right answer - that's a bit extreme. I suppose it differs for everyone, and there's an argument that people used to do just fine living on their homesteads without much outside contact for months except the occasional visit into town to go to the general store. But, for the majority of people, I believe weekly news is probably a good balance of relatively up-to-date information that's maybe even been filtered a bit (the good kind, filtering of noise, not the censorship kind), while still being infrequent enough as to not contribute to the continual degradation of the mind that constant feed scrolling brings. Personally, I'd probably want a short daily feed to check either in the morning, or after work, but even then most news is annoying for me, and I prefer to mainly just look at tech news...
Austiiiiii 2mo ago
>The Slow Journalism Company will use the information you provide on this form to send you the Slow Post newsletter. Please check the box below to confirm you agree There's something a bit heart-warming about this. When you sign up for the newsletter, it gives you an optional checkbox to ask if you give them permission to send you the newsletter you are signing up for. This is in stark contrast to the standard model where services typically don't give you a checkbox but sign you up for every spam mailer in the galaxy anyway.

337 points by speerer 2mo ago

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

This is really what a lot of people need, a return to learning about something 2-3 weeks after it happens and more details are known. I have often thought about with my friends who are "terminally online" that they would benefit from NOT being a town crier from times gone by. Many of my friends hate Twitter, hate Elon and hate social media, but because they have to be first to all the latest news, they remain locked in to Twitter day in and day out. They cannot quit. They are socially bound to them because being the person to start a topic on whats happened in Ukraine, who was traded to the Dolphins, etc is part of their socialization. It's been baffling to me, as I simply don't see the value in being the "first" to discuss some news, especially if its misinformation. Anyway, all that to say that I think is a great idea and would really benefit society to return back to less "real time" news, which really tends to drown out the big topics in favor of buzz words and Twitter quips.

pixel_popping 2mo ago
Most people clearly don't benefit from watching the news, tech news is a bit different but regular news are quite useless in general and plain toxic, I frankly advise everyone to take a break from reading the news altogether, maybe do it once a week, stay informed by other means, you won't miss anything, you'll improve your energy and mental health.
45h45h4h 2mo ago
one of the first commenters commenting about not being first - irony
- mikestew 2mo ago
  https://lowres.cartooncollections.com/all_or_nothing_fallacy-logical_fallacies-fallacies-hypocrisy-hypocrites-politics-NB900212_low.jpg https://lowres.cartooncollections.com/all_or_nothing_fallacy...
  - rjyjfjftjt 2mo ago
    I don't think it's a gotcha to point out it's ironic to literally be the thing someone is complaining about. Further irony, your gotcha is like exactly the point the comic is trying to make. It's like you were made by God to demonstrate failure.
- bearjaws 2mo ago
  It is funny I just happened to refresh HN on a break and this was trending with no comments.
sedawkgrep 2mo ago
> This is really what a lot of people need, a return to learning about something 2-3 weeks after it happens and more details are known. I agree. Aside from emergencies or other truly circumstance-changing news, I am not sure there's really any value in being immediately informed vs. days or perhaps even weeks later. I just hadn't thought in these terms before. I can't help but imagine how much healthier our society would be...
- SoftTalker 2mo ago
  We don't have a local newspaper anymore but there are a couple of bloggers who follow city council meetings and other local happenings. I read those fairly frequently. National/world news I have stopped following at all, as 99.5% of it doesn't affect me and I have no influence over any of it.
  - sedawkgrep 2mo ago
    Doesn’t the saying go something like “all politics are local” ?
keyringlight 2mo ago
I think proximity is a good measure, what different types of news do you need to know and will impact your decision making on different time scales? There's probably a very small amount of things I really need to know (practically) instantly, regional/national/continental/global news might be interesting to be summarized daily/weekly/monthly, but even then it will be different subsets where it affects me or is little more than trivia and will be forgotten quickly as I have little connection to it.

ainch 2mo ago

It's heartening to see that Delayed Gratification has successfully continued their work for so long. I used to work at Tortoise (who now own/operate The Observer) and our motto was 'Slow News'. We operated on a pretty transparent membership model, but I got the impression that it was difficult to make pure membership work financially, leading to a reliance on other revenue streams like podcasting and business partnerships over time.

setopt 2mo ago

Sounds very appealing. Anyone here have experience with it? If I want to try it, should I go print or digital? How is the writing compared to say The Economist or other more mainstream options?

datakan 2mo ago
Also interested in what their biases may be. Being "slow" isn't really enough, they also need to be fair and honest.
- speerer 2mo ago
  Having subscribeed for years, I find it very good on that front. I haven't detected any political bias, and I suspect they would say that fairness and honesty is what the "journalism" half of "slow journalism" means.
dwedge 2mo ago
How is the economist these days? Around a decade ago I read it cover to cover every week for 18 months, but during the brexkt referendum they seemed to go into a tantrum and half of the magazine was always about how brexit was 100% a bad thing. Even if I agreed with them I don't like "100%" biased news because at some point it's like propaganda. I understand they were started in support of trade deals but even so. Has it improved?
- LVB 2mo ago
  I've lapsed my subscription because it has, in my opinion, gotten a bit too clickbait-y and many of the articles are sort of thin rehashes of already covered material. It is still better than most, but also fairly pricy.
- Seattle3503 2mo ago
  It seems fine now
- carlosjobim 2mo ago
  You mean "The E-Communist"?

abound 2mo ago

I've been building something similar for my own purposes. Basically, I use Calibre's "Fetch News" functionality to get epubs of all the news sources I trust, and then once a month (interval is configurable), I run a pipeline over all of it (some LLM magic, partly local partly API) to dedupe and rank stories, then compile it into an actual honest-to-goodness newspaper (using Typst for layout and stuff), then read that at my leisure.

kristerv 2mo ago
The what now. But not all sources have epubs, right? Is there any one that you're missing now?
- advisedwang 2mo ago
  Calibre has a feature that will fetch a rss feed or (IIRC) scrape a site and make an epub from it.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- imhoguy 2mo ago
  epub is ZIP with HTML+CSS+images+some metadata.
- abound 2mo ago
  Nope! Every source I care about either has an RSS feed, or I've been able to make a custom recipe [1] to handle things like auth for paid sites and whatnot. [1] https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/glossary.html#term-recipe https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/glossary.html#term-recipe
sheesdev 2mo ago
This sounds really interesting and something I'd love to try. Do you have more details on how someone else can utilise this?
- 2mo ago

aaron695 2mo ago

[dead]

freakynit 2mo ago

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hampelm 2mo ago

I'd love a breaking news service that gives me the latest headlines -- but only if they are still true 2 weeks later.

FerretFred 2mo ago
Agreed, and chances are that due to the nature of the event bring reported, we as readers are unable to influence it in sny way. Therefore a couple of weeks delay will make mo difference.

parpfish 2mo ago

the twenty-four hour news cycle's unyielding need for urgent content has broken many people psychologically and we need to 'deprogram' them. i've often thought about making a site that lets you easily do side-by-side comparisons of news sites on different timescales (1 week, 1 month, 1 year) so you can pull it up and show them "see all this stuff that you feel like you NEED to consume? like it makes you a better informed member of society? how much of it actually mattered and how much of it was just there to hook you in the moment?"

deleted 2mo ago
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colechristensen 2mo ago
A well informed population is important. The problem is they're not well informed they're well-hooked to whatever exaggeration and drama the news can whip up. The invented news and invented intensity is the problem.
- ReactiveJelly 2mo ago
  "hooked" is right. I'm trying to tell people, you have to take initiative, you have to have agency and be responsible for your own attention. If you are being "fed" from a "feed" you are being fattened for slaughter
Brendinooo 2mo ago
I just wanna throw in that Tangle News[0] strikes a pretty good balance here. Their core offering is detailed breakdowns of what is generally regarded as the top four stories of the week, one a day from Monday through Thursday, which is usually more than enough space to keep you "up on current events", and they usually (though not always) tend to give enough space to let stories develop before summarizing. They're a good fit on your "one week" timescale. [0]: https://www.readtangle.com/ https://www.readtangle.com/
- T1ny 2mo ago

dwedge 2mo ago

Delayed gratification in my case was going through three captchas before I could even read the advert for a magazine. I know it's common but that disrespect for the customer irks me. How do people here find the content, is it worth trying again?

bcraven 2mo ago
if you like print journalism they're a good option with great print quality
- dwedge 2mo ago
  Thank you. I'll give them a try, if recommended I can forgive captchas because most companies don't really think about the negative user experience and it's unfair to punish one

ChrisArchitect 2mo ago

highlighting this as 'slow journalism' is a bit odd - it's a magazine, there are lots of them, quarterly etc. The slowness is a given, the delay is the feature.

jrmg 2mo ago
This magazine only covers stories that are at least three months old.

kridsdale3 2mo ago

In this spirit, I prefer to not read any online news, or daily newspaper, but the weekly Economist in print. It has higher quality writing than all the rest, has a built in capacitor buffer against high frequency low signal bullshit (noise) by virtue of being weekly, and contains all the information about the world that mattered in that time period. Zero engagement bait because it's an expensive subscription.

probst 2mo ago
I have been a long time subscriber to the economist for the same reason. The print edition is great and keeps me feeling informed. If only it wouldn’t include the digital edition too… Invariably, the more stressed I get in my everyday life by work and small children and lack of sleep, the more I get dragged towards the online edition of the economist, and BAM I’m back in the constant instant news cycle again, even though the site doesn’t update that often. My latest life hack which I can recommend to anyone, at least in Germany: as part of my local library membership I get access to the PressReader app, which gives me access to the print edition of the economist! At 10 EUR a year it’s so affordable it nearly feels like it’s unethically so for what I get. I guess I’ll close with: May we forever be blessed with libraries, and may they never be „optimised away“ as an unnecessary social good.
thegrim33 2mo ago
I haven't read or engaged in mainstream media in over 15 years now. I just pulled up the Economist website for fun to see what's on it. I see stories that have absolutely nothing to do with me or the country (e.g. an article gushing about how China managed to stop massively polluting one of their rivers. In what universe is that remotely relevant to me? Why is this the front page story?), I see the typical biased articles and bias in choosing what to report on, everything all biased politically the same way (of course, if you hold the same biases then you don't see the bias, it all just just looks normal/neutral/true to you), I see stories increasing the fear and hate in the world (China has a scary secretive shadowy maritime militia! Oil markets are scary right now! Be afraid!), there's absolutely nothing of interest to me. Guess I'll go another 15.
the_sleaze_ 2mo ago

losvedir 2mo ago

Interesting. I wonder where the "sweet spot" on the delay is. I've given up online news and twitter and all that entirely, and just read my print Economist, which comes weekly. That already has the news somewhat delayed and presumably with less of a rush to report has a little more fact checking. This advertises up to a 3 month delay. I do like that with that much lead time you can see not just news but sometimes a bit of the fallout and consequences. Not a fan of the name, though. It reads like those Claude comments that I absolutely despise, where it feels the need to comment in a reactionary way to the feedback it's getting and changes it's making, rather than a forward-looking way that's cohesive with the new state of the codebase. Maybe I missed it, but is there a back issue available I could page through, or even just a full story somewhere, that I could read so I can evaluate what I think of it?

speerer 2mo ago
Luckily the magazine came long before Claude, but I suppose your comparison describes their mission pretty well. It's a haven of non-AI writing.

akurilin 2mo ago

I enjoyed this magazine and subscribed to it for a while, but I wish there was a US-centered version of it for those of us on this side of the pond.

petercooper 2mo ago

I was subscribed to this. It's beautifully designed, well written, good paper stock, the works. If the idea appeals to you, it's worth trying. Ultimately, it didn't work for me, but that's my fault. Despite my best intentions, it turned out I wasn't interested in reading about world affairs beyond the news cycle.

Seattle3503 2mo ago
Did they show the same news as everyone, but later? That seems like it doesn't fully leverage the format. The format seems like it would be good for things that are subtle and got overlooked at the time. But I guess maybe the normal news cycle can surface those same things when they reach a breaking point.
- petercooper 2mo ago
  It's been several years (and the issues are in my office so I could take a look later) but I recall it was a mix. They'd sometimes group big stories together thematically (like when all the billionaires were starting to get into space) but also do longer-term reflections on single, complex stories like the Salisbury Novichok incident. I don't recall it really surfacing things that didn't make the news cycle, but one thing I failed to mention is they had (have?) really good infographics/visualizations! They have a lot of the more recent ones here https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/infographics https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/infographics
  - nzealand 2mo ago
    This is exactly correct. Here is what the latest issue covers: His exfiltration of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was swift, effective and - as we found in our follow-up reporting - surprisingly popular among Venezuelans (plo). But then the 47th president threw himself into a new venture, a major attack on Iran. Far from being a surgical strike à la Caracas, it rapidly spiralled into a regional conflagration which threatened to blast the global economy off its hinges. We have analysed the build-up and fall-out of the Iran war in forensic detail in an infographic extravaganza (p70). While Trump loomed large throughout the quarter, adding an Ice operation in Minneapolis (p30) and unseemly wranglings over Greenland (p50) into the headline-grabbing mix, his was not the only game in town. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested (P66), a football final turned into theatrical chaos (p40), the power of Al gave hope to sufferers of ultra-rare diseases (p80) and victory was declared over ferrets on a Northern Irish island (p100). Meanwhile Nasa scientists announced fascinating revelations drawn from their analysis of a thimbleful of space dust obtained at great expense from a four billion-year-old asteroid (p56). edit: you can see some samples on their website: https://www.slow-journalism.com/back-issue/62-jan-mar-2026 https://www.slow-journalism.com/back-issue/62-jan-mar-2026

johnhamlin 2mo ago

I generally wait for a story to get a full feature in The New Yorker or The Atlantic before I give it my attention. Similar concept

rzk 2mo ago

[dead]

networked 2mo ago

I learned about Delayed Gratification when someone linked "The last of the Flying Wallendas" (https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazine/the-last-of-the-flying-wallendas https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazi...) in a chatroom. In the spirit of the magazine, I set a reminder to read it in a year. I decided to do it again when the reminder triggered. A total of three years later, it was a good article.

hamper653 2mo ago

Does this publication assume prior basic knowledge of the past months’ events?

rdmuser 2mo ago

They had their 15th birthday late last year: https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazine/dg15birthday https://www.slow-journalism.com/delayed-gratification-magazi... If you feel interested in following them but it feels too high traffic or chaotic you can follow specific categories with rss by just going to subcategories on the website and adding /feed to the end of the url. Even slower journalism! For example I follow the long reads one: https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/long-reads/feed https://www.slow-journalism.com/filter/long-reads/feed You can do that trick with a lot of sites. One of your old faves started pumping out listicles but still puts out good stuff here and there? Might be worth seeing if those higher quality articles have their own categories with feeds.

openasocket 2mo ago

One thing that has really frustrated me with "mainstream media" in the last few years is that the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decline. I feel like half of the news articles are just a collection of quotes from officials or politicians in public statements, being regurgitated without any additional effort. Outrageous claims are just taken at face value, or at best just put alongside quotes from other officials/politicians saying the opposite. As an example, how many times has the strait of Hormuz been declared open by the US, when it turns out it really wasn't? And every time these low-effort articles just echo that statement without even trying to evaluate if that is true. I mean, the transponder data on shipping is publicly available, there's a dozen websites you could use to actually see passage through the strait to verify the claim. If you don't do even the most basic follow ups, is that even a news article? Or is it just a more elaborate form of re-tweeting?

dmoy 2mo ago
This is not exactly a new criticism. See e.g. Fisk's complaint from decades ago r.e. "US Officials Say" https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-farcical-end-of-the-american-dream-6106419.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/rober...
- andy_ppp 2mo ago
  How can we measure if things are worse now? Potentially asking/training an LLM on news stories from different eras might be a fairer comparison than human intelligence at this point.
fyltr 2mo ago
isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? I am not old enough to be able to compare to what journalism might once have been, but it seems that the current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases. Also, I often hear stuff like: don't put too much weight on what X says, he was wrong about Y. Lower journalist wages, a need for immediate reporting that undermines in-depth research and risking your own rep every time you put more than 'facts' out there just don't give any incentive to do more than pick out the quotes you want to use.

Barrin92 2mo ago

I wonder how much news related issues have to do with the way news is presented rather than the frequency at which you read the news. Daily news reading doesn't strike me as concerning given that getting a newspaper delivered in the mail in the morning was entirely normal practice and people didn't seem to experience the distress they do now. Between the 20s and up until the 70s almost every American household subscribed to a daily newspaper. I figure the fact that news has turned into hedonic consumption is the much bigger deal. Neil Postman wrote a book, Amusing Ourselves to Death outlining how mass media turned all programming into entertainment programming. Everything is stimulating, emotionally charged etc. That to me seems to be the exhausting part. So as for the title of this publication people really seem to be into the "delayed" part but I think the "gratification" part might be the problem

FerretFred 2mo ago

The apparent need by the Media to keep issuing constant updates and then suddenly having to retract the story is very frustrating. Each "update" is usually slighly incremental and is invariably a short new paragraph tacked into the previous version. The final version of the story being covered is often a mea culpa retraction because earlier versions were rushed and inaccurate. I'm trying very hard to escape this destructive cycle but it's not easy.

munk-a 2mo ago

It turns out there are a few stories that are important to be immediately aware of (declarations of war, local events like service outages or celebration - and only if they're planned with short notice). Most of the rest of the news is important for the purpose of holding people to account but outside the influence of regular people. We can live in a society where a massive scandal happens and it takes two months for the systems and mechanisms to respond to it. I genuinely believe that most stories are better delivered with full information and nuance well after the event occurs than immediately.

deleted 2mo ago
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piker 2mo ago
Nassim Taleb has a note about this idea in one of his books. Essentially just pointing out how unimportant most news headlines are a few years out.
- bandofthehawk 2mo ago
  If you are interested, Daniel Boorstin wrote about similar ideas much earlier in The Image.
  - exq 2mo ago
    Another one: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
smoe 2mo ago
15 years after making the decision, while working for a major news outlet, to no longer read “the news,” I can pretty confidently say: if something is important enough for you to know, it will reach you eventually anyway. Consuming news has little to do with being informed. Quite the opposite, at times.
- watwut 2mo ago

whatever1 2mo ago

My problem is the opposite. When there are breaking news directly affecting me I have no way of getting them. In between a myriad of notifications, fake social media posts, total collapse of local radio and tv, I have no idea of how to stay informed.

misiti3780 2mo ago

This is a great idea (although it probably exists in other places) I'm reminded of Taleb's (2) https://stevenbagley.net/blog/taleb-signal-to-noise.html https://stevenbagley.net/blog/taleb-signal-to-noise.html

something98 2mo ago

Similar to the longer cycle times, I'm curious if there is the equivalent for HN. I like this site, https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/, but it's once-per-day. I'd at least like once-per-week.

jrmg 2mo ago
You’re in luck! https://buttondown.com/hacker-newsletter/archive/ https://buttondown.com/hacker-newsletter/archive/
cperciva 2mo ago
I'm guessing you want https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly/ https://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly/ then?
- something98 2mo ago
  yup. didn't know it was there

tomhow 2mo ago

Previously: Delayed Gratification – The Slow Journalism Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32222831 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32222831 - July 2022 (16 comments) Delayed Gratification: A Slow Journalism Magazine - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200573 - Jan 2020 (23 comments)

LoganDark 2mo ago

For a really long time, I've wanted a way to know just about products that have already actually released, rather than exciting innovations that'll be in the lab for years. I haven't really had that problem with news.

shelled 2mo ago

I cancelled the subscription because I just couldn't connect its stories ever. such was their choices. Not just the subjects and how the stories were from physically so far that I felt it was an exercise in compulsion on my part. I wasn't a fan of the writing style either. Besides, at some point it started to feel like news and journalism were not centre stage, being "delayed" and different were.

mttch 2mo ago

Was a long term subscriber, now just a podcast listener: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/delayed-gratification-the-slow-news-podcast/id1881613386 https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/delayed-gratification-...

velcrovan 2mo ago
As someone curious about subscribing: why did you end your subscription?

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

rch 2mo ago

Legible News has a weekly edition for subscribers: https://legiblenews.com/week https://legiblenews.com/week

mdp2021 2mo ago

The RSS is hidden (to my checks) but there and working: https://www.slow-journalism.com/blog/rss https://www.slow-journalism.com/blog/rss

surfsvammel 2mo ago

I used to be a subscriber of Delayed Gratification. And I really enjoyed it. But, I’m based in Sweden and it was just too much UK focused stuff for my liking.

mfallon 2mo ago

I think it depends on how you follow it. If you're strategic and surgical about it, breaking news keeps you informed. If it's a routine, if the TV is on all day waiting for something to break, that ultimately makes you sadder and is worse for you.

insane_dreamer 2mo ago

everything these days is "breaking news!" -- I've come to hate that moniker, and sometimes actively ignore anything tagged as such. It goes without saying that I stopped watching TV news years ago--it's pretty much garbage.

vasco 2mo ago

I just don't read any news other than if they show up here or someone in my life tells me. And even then that's way too many news. There's really not a need for any news, if it wasn't by now a 15 year old addiction to come to this site I'd be even happier with even less news. Whoever says you'll not be a productive member of society or that you NEED to know current events to participate, just tell them they're wrong, they're miserable anyway.

choult 2mo ago

I am so glad to see these guys get some well-deserved attention! I worked with the founders Marcus and Rob, and met their infographics whizz Christian waay back when they were kicking this off. I was blown away by it then, and I continue to be blown away now. Here's to the next 15 years!

duxup 2mo ago

The best news articles I read on sites like NYT and so on are the ones that come weeks or even months after the events. So much more informative.

wackget 2mo ago
But then how do you make knee-jerk reactions on social media to vilify those who hold politically opposite views to yours?

wraptile 2mo ago

I've been subscribed to Delayed Gratification for a year now and really enjoy it. Brilliant editorial with beautiful and easily digestible infographics. My only gripe is that at times it's a bit too UK centric at times, but I guess it's understandable this being a UK-based publisher.

petrev01 2mo ago

Current subscriber and big fan here! I honestly just wish they would dial down the infographics and bring a few more long form articles each magazine.

BrandoElFollito 2mo ago

I would love to have something like this for HN, a RSS feed with articles over 5 hours (5 hours because it is old enough to have comments which are often more interesting that the article, and fresh enough to get a reaction on a comment follow-up)

reindeer2 2mo ago

[flagged]

Magicrafter13 2mo ago

Cute idea, and I do think that we have way too much on our news feeds constantly, however, I don't think making news a quarterly ordeal is the right answer - that's a bit extreme. I suppose it differs for everyone, and there's an argument that people used to do just fine living on their homesteads without much outside contact for months except the occasional visit into town to go to the general store. But, for the majority of people, I believe weekly news is probably a good balance of relatively up-to-date information that's maybe even been filtered a bit (the good kind, filtering of noise, not the censorship kind), while still being infrequent enough as to not contribute to the continual degradation of the mind that constant feed scrolling brings. Personally, I'd probably want a short daily feed to check either in the morning, or after work, but even then most news is annoying for me, and I prefer to mainly just look at tech news...

Austiiiiii 2mo ago

>The Slow Journalism Company will use the information you provide on this form to send you the Slow Post newsletter. Please check the box below to confirm you agree There's something a bit heart-warming about this. When you sign up for the newsletter, it gives you an optional checkbox to ask if you give them permission to send you the newsletter you are signing up for. This is in stark contrast to the standard model where services typically don't give you a checkbox but sign you up for every spam mailer in the galaxy anyway.