How exactly do you define "news" here? Right now, I'm on a news site, because it says that in the top left corner of my screen. I've seen this type of story men

How exactly do you define "news" here? Right now, I'm on a news site, because it says that in the top left corner of my screen. I've seen this type of story mentioned before, and in the past the response was "the purpose of news is to give people conversational topics to talk about." On Hacker News, I'm possibly saving myself some time. I don't have to sift through all of the content out there, the filter exists for me and that of itself is performing a lot of work. Hacker News is essentially a crowdsourced sorting mechanism done by its users. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I still decide what I'll read and what I'll pass over. I am reading essays and articles that do a lot of the thinking for me. Sure, I may think less critically by letting someone else do that for me, but I ultimately decide whether I agree or disagree with the point being made. I'll choose the things that I really care about and I'll think harder about those, and maybe I'll contribute my own findings, which other people will find helpful. I'm not sold that giving up news entirely is good. And how do you define the word? Google News is an aggregate collection of news articles. Am I still reading "the news" if I'm on Google News or Hacker News, or do I need to be on a direct source such as AP or CNN? Does it even matter, since the aggregators and other bloggers will refer back to them?