4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you curate and keep up with general news?

30 points by gravedave 12y ago

As in, a way to keep up with stuff that is relevant in the long term, like wars, while discarding flavor-of-the-week scandals and such. Any periodic retrospectives you follow, stuff like that?

wsc981 12y ago
Perhaps it's better to just not keep up with the news too much. From what I understand the world is safer today than it has ever been, especially in the Western world. And most news is bad news anyway - you won't feel much happier knowing about it. Maybe it's better to focus on what's important and what you have some influence over, like the well-being of your family and friends, self improvement and your future goals.
- gravedave 12y ago
  I know that much, but when socializing, I still want to be able to not be like "huh?" when someone brings up, say, Russia's suspension from the G8/G7 over their annexation of Crimea.
  - lfowles 12y ago
    Any issue with letting _them_ be your news source? "Really, I haven't been following, could you explain what's happening?"
    - gravedave 12y ago
      Yes, they're not really the let-me-explain type. I wouldn't ask about this if I didn't think it's a question worth answering.
    - ggreer 12y ago
      That's exactly what I do. Conversations are my only source of non-tech news. To give some idea of how disconnected I am: I didn't know who won the Super Bowl until the Tuesday after, and I've since forgotten. It's quite pleasant to live like this. Most news is both depressing and completely irrelevant to daily life. Unless there's a natural disaster nearby, news doesn't really matter to me. My life is affected much more by the next release of io.js than by some Russian G8 membership dispute.[1] And I don't mind being clueless about current events or media. Typically, people are more than willing to summarize important news in conversation, or I can get the gist as others discuss it. 1. Which I only learned about because gravedave mentioned it.
    - Rapzid 12y ago
      Given how barely reliable news outlets are I'd hate for some bodies sole news source to be Freddie in accounts.
      - lfowles 12y ago
        You don't have to take Freddie's word to be absolute truth. It's probably going to be a better conversation if you go in with an open mind than if you persistently correct his sources[0]. [0]: http://xkcd.com/1475/ http://xkcd.com/1475/
- PeterisP 12y ago
  What you say was true some 2 years ago, but right now Western world/NATO is as close to conflict as in the Cold war - of course, not nearly as close as in the peaks of Cold war, but comparable to most of the 'background' of cold war, and less relaxed and safe as, say, in year 2000. Also, depends on where you live - there is a big difference between USA and, say, eastern parts of EU.
- ExpiredLink 12y ago
  "News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier" http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rol...
anthony_franco 12y ago
I signed up for Bit of News. It sends me a daily email with the important five or so topics of the day.
- gravedave 12y ago
  That's more or less what I wanted! Would have hoped for a weekly thing, but close enough.
lfowles 12y ago
I listen to NPR on the commute. Since I'm focused on driving, any newsworthy event has to be mentioned a dozen times before it gets through to me. A sort of low pass filter for news. I tried to follow newspapers and the Economist, but it was wasted time brushing up on trivia that doesn't affect 99% of my life (edit: and that I have no reasonable chance of changing).
- gravedave 12y ago
  I happen to be a commuter myself. Sounds like a good time to catch up. I may try and do this from now on.
- bdastous 12y ago
  I recommend checking out NPR One if you haven't already: http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/ http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/ Disclaimer: I work on the back end services for the app.
  - lfowles 12y ago
    Ahhhh I wish I had a good data connection inside the office, this would be useful.
MarcScott 12y ago
Old fashioned, I know, but I listen to the radio. I often have BBC Radio 4 on in the background, where I can catch the hourly news. Then there' she excellent Today program in the morning and PM in the afternoon.
- gravedave 12y ago
  Doesn't sound too old-fashioned to me, given the popularity of online radio. Still, I'm not sure I'd be able to focus on stuff if I had radio on all the time.
- danohuiginn 12y ago
  I'm a big fan of the BBC World Service, which tends to have more content and less human interest compared to Radio 4. In particular 'Newshour' is the best general world news coverage I've found, and available as podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/newshour http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/newshour
  - danohuiginn 12y ago
    and there's Democracy Now -- it's unashamedly politically biased, but brings up important stories that don't get covered much elsewhere. The best part is the news roundup at the start -- the rest is features and interviews, which can be very good or entirely dull. http://www.democracynow.org/podcasting http://www.democracynow.org/podcasting
MarcScott 12y ago
Old fashioned, I know, but I listen to the radio. I often have BBC Radio 4 on in the background, where I can catch the hourly news. Then there' she excellent Today program in the morning and PM in the afternoon.
olalonde 12y ago
I read http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/top/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/top/ about once or twice a month (pro-tip: avoid comment section).
a3n 12y ago
The NYT sends me an email every morning of 20 or so articles from subjects that I chose, and I read two or three of them most days. The Economist has the same thing, I think, but they're more expensive, and probably somewhat overlapping the NYT service. And HN. In fact you could use HN as in the old saw, "If it's important, the waiter will mention it." I first heard about the black and blue dress on HN.
jeffreyrogers 12y ago
I don't. There are a handful of sites I follow via RSS and I get any really important new through them. I think what you'll find though is that most news isn't relevant to you (including HN) and that you can both be less anxious and have more time to focus on whatever is important to you if you miss it. Just try delaying news consumption by a week to see what I mean. Most of it will seem irrelevant a week later. Since I saw you mentioned wanting to be able to talk about whatever other people are bringing up in conversation or just having a basic awareness of what's going on in the world, you might want to try thebrowser.com. It usually links to a handful of high quality articles each day about topics related to what's going on in the world.
danohuiginn 12y ago
For anybody who reads French, I recommend http://www.courrierinternational.com/ http://www.courrierinternational.com/. They select and translate articles from the world press on whatever are the most important issues. So you'll get Greek discussions of Syriza, Ukrainian and Russian comment on Donbass, etc. I've not found anything as good in English, but presumably it's out there somewhere. Otherwise, I find it useful to read through archives. The Guardian does a good job of tagging everything. The New York Times is good for world news by country -- e.g. if you want to know what's been going on in Poland lately, start at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/poland/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesan... Also, Spiegel Online put up some of their best articles in English, though they can be frustratingly pompous and long-winded.
- jorgecastillo 12y ago
  I am going to get a little off-topic here, another awesome website in french is http://linuxfr.org/ http://linuxfr.org/. If you know of any other website of similar content & an quality in English, Spanish or Portuguese please let me know. There are some English websites I've checked before like Phoronix, Linux.com, Slashdot, etc., but I don't feel that they have as much high quality content as LinuxFr.
- mrottenkolber 12y ago
  Please everyone who thinks Spiegel is a decent magazine. It's not. Any German with a bit of an education can only detest the journalistic "quality" of Der Spiegel. It's a propaganda outlet, on the same level as Deutsche Welle, Russia Today or even boulevard/tabloid noise like Bild and Express.
archagon 12y ago
Reddit — subscribed /r/news and /r/worldnews. It's terrible for the comments, but the pressing issues will tend to float to the top. Also, if anything really bad happens, I usually see it on Facebook, MetaFilter, or even HN.
Paul_S 12y ago
You should really ask yourself if you need to. If you're middle class, have a highly skilled job that pays enough money and live in a major city (and you have settled there) in a peaceful western country then it genuinely is a waste of time to listen to the news as it has zero effect on you. But to answer your direct question I listen to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (6-9am). The reporting is as terrible as any other major news network but has just enough info to keep you in touch with what is happening so you don't feel lost in conversations at the pub.
manish_gill 12y ago
Curated Google News, Quartz daily emails, BBC, LiveMint, The Economist. Gave up on Reddit as a news source quite a while ago. It's a cesspool. For Tech News, HN has been my main source so far, but I'm adding Techmeme to the mix as well. Edit: Yahoo's News Digest app is fantastic as well. Twice a day, it sends me a few top articles that are making the news. And it's beautifully designed. I highly recommend it.
bennesvig 12y ago
I subscribe to NextDraft, which sends me a daily email with top stories. One of the few newsletters I enjoy. http://nextdraft.com/ http://nextdraft.com/
austenallred 12y ago
Tomorrow we launch https://grasswire.com https://grasswire.com to the public. It's in private beta now, but it's a newsroom for the internet. Basically a hacker news full of news junkies and reporters. They ruthlessly curate and fact check the world's most important news. The end result is a daily (or weekly) email that gets sent out. It's digestible in thirty seconds, contains only important news, and has been fact checked by thousands of people to ensure accuracy. No agenda, no celebrity gossip, just facts and sources. I would be honored if you would check it out.
- etimberg 12y ago
  Looks great, thanks for sharing :)
- Paul_S 12y ago
  "In February 2015, the news will be completely turned over to you. Access is first-come, first-served. Reserve your space now." How do I do that? It's March and all I can see is that text.
  - austenallred 12y ago
    We were going to launch on the 28th, then we realized it was a Saturday. Whoops! So we're launching Monday. Just drop your email in the field and we'll send out an email tomorrow that you're in.
    - spurgu 12y ago
      Email field doesn't show for me on Chrome, on Firefox it does.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - Tinyyy 12y ago
      There is indeed a problem with adblock on the site. It’s funny that I saw the email form for a split second before it was blocked, so I spent the past 10 minutes figuring out how to let it pop up.
DocFeind 12y ago
I would have to say/agree with BBC and NPR radio.
vermontdevil 12y ago
Do you remember any significant news one year ago today? That's why I ignore the general news. Long-form journalism on the other hand is what I read.
- chatmasta 12y ago
  Yes, actually. MH 370 and Ukraine are two stories that began in March of last year. They're still relevant today. The news is a collection of stories. The big ones last a long time. If you want to sound like an informed world citizen, you should keep up on the big stories. It's not always easy to tell which stories will be big, but if you start following them early, it's easy to keep up with them.
  - vermontdevil 12y ago
    Ukraine is big today because it's still ongoing. People have forgotten MH370 already save for that one guy who came up with a wild conspiracy theory about MH370 landing in Kazakhstan. I'm referring to general news that is talked about on a daily basis. Most of them are quickly forgotten.
    - chatmasta 12y ago
      Agreed many headlines are quickly forgotten. Ukraine is still ongoing, and obviously relevant. At what point should someone have started following the story? Does it have to maintain relevance for a minimum time period before it's worthy of following?
igammarays 12y ago
Yahoo News Digest, a notification once every morning and evening on my phone.
troymc 12y ago
Check out the "In the News" column on the home page of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page For a few pages of quick summaries of all the big political, international, and business news, check out the opening pages of The Economist.
plg 12y ago
NYTimes CBC News Guardian just about covers it for me
d4nt 12y ago
News is an entertainment show. News editors edit actual events into an engaging narrative in the same way that reality TV shows edit the events that occur in their show's domain into a narrative. There is plenty of raw material to work with. On any given day there are wars, injustices, political in-fighting, dishonest or fraudulent behaviour, and amusing stories about dogs on skateboards (or whatever). They're just editing it together. Those in positions of power are so good at manipulating the news agenda too. Everyone from the government to the British Royal Family to Beyoncé to ISIS are at it; essentially pitching stories to news editors in the hope they get picked up. Personally, I try to avoid it. I find news uses fear and outrage too much as a way to keep you watching, and it engenders a sense of hopelessness. Come election time I do some research and vote accordingly, the rest of the time I avoid it.
- charlysisto 12y ago
  no one lives in a cave here. It's close to impossible to keep away from the noise. After all sharing news is being part of the human community. You don't want to cut yourself from it. However you don't want to get overwhelmed and there's a lot of sensationalist journalism out there that seeks to stimulate your reptilian brain. On the other hand theres' also good (aka rational/analytical) journalism that helps making a sane narrative out of it without getting you stuck in the rabbit hole. Stay close to those whatever side of the political spectrum you find yourself and you'll save a lot of time.
jonathansizz 12y ago
I find some of the comments on here along the lines of 'I don't bother with the news because it doesn't immediately directly affect me' to be a little worrying. In an era where power is increasingly concentrated, centralized and opaque, we need responsible citizens to become more engaged. A prerequisite for this is that people take an active interest in what's going on in the world, even at the expense of their immediate personal interests. You can't avoid politics; if you ignore it you're just deferring to other people who'll make decisions for you. Cynicism is the enemy of a decent society.
- DanBC 12y ago
  > I find some of the comments on here along the lines of 'I don't bother with the news because it doesn't immediately directly affect me' to be a little worrying. It explains why so many people were surprised by Snowden leaks even though we'd had similar reports for years before Snowden.
dlu 12y ago
The Daily Show. I have no idea what I'm going to do when Jon Stewart retires.
DanBC 12y ago
I read IRIN, Trust.org, and reliefweb. http://irinnews.org/ http://irinnews.org/ http://www.trust.org/humanitarian/ http://www.trust.org/humanitarian/ http://reliefweb.int/ http://reliefweb.int/ Edit: curious that this got downvoted so rapidly when OP specifically mentions wanting to keep track of things like wars, which these sites all cover, while discarding flavor-of-the-week scandals, which again these sites avoid.
- mrottenkolber 12y ago
  Because HN is the worst possible place to have an exchange of views. Seems like a sensible selection of news sources to me. May I add: The Intercept is nice.
jorgecastillo 12y ago
I follow the RSS feed of multiple newspapers & I read my local newspaper & Newsweek in print. But to be frank news consumption is like any other form of entertainment, don't delude yourself into thinking that the time you use consuming news is time well spent.
joshcanhelp 12y ago
I'm a big fan for Vox's daily news summary. They have a great way of giving relevant information in a compact format. What's nice is that they don't just post to their own site, they curate from others as well.
mrottenkolber 12y ago
I have subscribed to Guardian Weekly, it's... OK. I get easily irritated by incompetent reporters so the fact that I don't regret getting the subscription says a lot of good things about the general quality of the Guardian. As an anecdote: The coverage of a local event (Bonn, Germany) by the Guardian was OK. Not perfect, but not a complete outrage either. And that's a good thing because e.g. the local paper "Generalanzeiger" usually fumbles even the local news in a way so horrific its.... uargh. I have found http://everything2.com/ http://everything2.com/ to be an amazing source of general thought food.
lfx 12y ago
Quartz daily brief are great! http://qz.com/daily-brief/ http://qz.com/daily-brief/ I got news every morning, check the headlines while on commute. News are not too much political, economical, etc, just kind of most important bits. News about Tesla and SpaceX - check. Google, FB and startups - check. Some interesting bits - check. Word in general - check, check, check.
java-man 12y ago
Check out personalized news curated by an AI, definitely not mainstream sources. http://News-AI.com http://News-AI.com

30 points by gravedave 12y ago

As in, a way to keep up with stuff that is relevant in the long term, like wars, while discarding flavor-of-the-week scandals and such. Any periodic retrospectives you follow, stuff like that?

wsc981 12y ago

Perhaps it's better to just not keep up with the news too much. From what I understand the world is safer today than it has ever been, especially in the Western world. And most news is bad news anyway - you won't feel much happier knowing about it. Maybe it's better to focus on what's important and what you have some influence over, like the well-being of your family and friends, self improvement and your future goals.

gravedave 12y ago
I know that much, but when socializing, I still want to be able to not be like "huh?" when someone brings up, say, Russia's suspension from the G8/G7 over their annexation of Crimea.
- lfowles 12y ago
  Any issue with letting _them_ be your news source? "Really, I haven't been following, could you explain what's happening?"
  - gravedave 12y ago
    Yes, they're not really the let-me-explain type. I wouldn't ask about this if I didn't think it's a question worth answering.
  - ggreer 12y ago
    That's exactly what I do. Conversations are my only source of non-tech news. To give some idea of how disconnected I am: I didn't know who won the Super Bowl until the Tuesday after, and I've since forgotten. It's quite pleasant to live like this. Most news is both depressing and completely irrelevant to daily life. Unless there's a natural disaster nearby, news doesn't really matter to me. My life is affected much more by the next release of io.js than by some Russian G8 membership dispute.[1] And I don't mind being clueless about current events or media. Typically, people are more than willing to summarize important news in conversation, or I can get the gist as others discuss it. 1. Which I only learned about because gravedave mentioned it.
  - Rapzid 12y ago
    Given how barely reliable news outlets are I'd hate for some bodies sole news source to be Freddie in accounts.
    - lfowles 12y ago
      You don't have to take Freddie's word to be absolute truth. It's probably going to be a better conversation if you go in with an open mind than if you persistently correct his sources[0]. [0]: http://xkcd.com/1475/ http://xkcd.com/1475/
PeterisP 12y ago
What you say was true some 2 years ago, but right now Western world/NATO is as close to conflict as in the Cold war - of course, not nearly as close as in the peaks of Cold war, but comparable to most of the 'background' of cold war, and less relaxed and safe as, say, in year 2000. Also, depends on where you live - there is a big difference between USA and, say, eastern parts of EU.
ExpiredLink 12y ago
"News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier" http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rol...

anthony_franco 12y ago

I signed up for Bit of News. It sends me a daily email with the important five or so topics of the day.

gravedave 12y ago
That's more or less what I wanted! Would have hoped for a weekly thing, but close enough.

lfowles 12y ago

I listen to NPR on the commute. Since I'm focused on driving, any newsworthy event has to be mentioned a dozen times before it gets through to me. A sort of low pass filter for news. I tried to follow newspapers and the Economist, but it was wasted time brushing up on trivia that doesn't affect 99% of my life (edit: and that I have no reasonable chance of changing).

gravedave 12y ago
I happen to be a commuter myself. Sounds like a good time to catch up. I may try and do this from now on.
bdastous 12y ago
I recommend checking out NPR One if you haven't already: http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/ http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/ Disclaimer: I work on the back end services for the app.
- lfowles 12y ago
  Ahhhh I wish I had a good data connection inside the office, this would be useful.

MarcScott 12y ago

Old fashioned, I know, but I listen to the radio. I often have BBC Radio 4 on in the background, where I can catch the hourly news. Then there' she excellent Today program in the morning and PM in the afternoon.

gravedave 12y ago
Doesn't sound too old-fashioned to me, given the popularity of online radio. Still, I'm not sure I'd be able to focus on stuff if I had radio on all the time.
danohuiginn 12y ago
I'm a big fan of the BBC World Service, which tends to have more content and less human interest compared to Radio 4. In particular 'Newshour' is the best general world news coverage I've found, and available as podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/newshour http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/newshour
- danohuiginn 12y ago
  and there's Democracy Now -- it's unashamedly politically biased, but brings up important stories that don't get covered much elsewhere. The best part is the news roundup at the start -- the rest is features and interviews, which can be very good or entirely dull. http://www.democracynow.org/podcasting http://www.democracynow.org/podcasting

MarcScott 12y ago

olalonde 12y ago

I read http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/top/ http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/top/ about once or twice a month (pro-tip: avoid comment section).

a3n 12y ago

The NYT sends me an email every morning of 20 or so articles from subjects that I chose, and I read two or three of them most days. The Economist has the same thing, I think, but they're more expensive, and probably somewhat overlapping the NYT service. And HN. In fact you could use HN as in the old saw, "If it's important, the waiter will mention it." I first heard about the black and blue dress on HN.

jeffreyrogers 12y ago

I don't. There are a handful of sites I follow via RSS and I get any really important new through them. I think what you'll find though is that most news isn't relevant to you (including HN) and that you can both be less anxious and have more time to focus on whatever is important to you if you miss it. Just try delaying news consumption by a week to see what I mean. Most of it will seem irrelevant a week later. Since I saw you mentioned wanting to be able to talk about whatever other people are bringing up in conversation or just having a basic awareness of what's going on in the world, you might want to try thebrowser.com. It usually links to a handful of high quality articles each day about topics related to what's going on in the world.

danohuiginn 12y ago

For anybody who reads French, I recommend http://www.courrierinternational.com/ http://www.courrierinternational.com/. They select and translate articles from the world press on whatever are the most important issues. So you'll get Greek discussions of Syriza, Ukrainian and Russian comment on Donbass, etc. I've not found anything as good in English, but presumably it's out there somewhere. Otherwise, I find it useful to read through archives. The Guardian does a good job of tagging everything. The New York Times is good for world news by country -- e.g. if you want to know what's been going on in Poland lately, start at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/poland/index.html http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesan... Also, Spiegel Online put up some of their best articles in English, though they can be frustratingly pompous and long-winded.

jorgecastillo 12y ago
I am going to get a little off-topic here, another awesome website in french is http://linuxfr.org/ http://linuxfr.org/. If you know of any other website of similar content & an quality in English, Spanish or Portuguese please let me know. There are some English websites I've checked before like Phoronix, Linux.com, Slashdot, etc., but I don't feel that they have as much high quality content as LinuxFr.
mrottenkolber 12y ago
Please everyone who thinks Spiegel is a decent magazine. It's not. Any German with a bit of an education can only detest the journalistic "quality" of Der Spiegel. It's a propaganda outlet, on the same level as Deutsche Welle, Russia Today or even boulevard/tabloid noise like Bild and Express.

archagon 12y ago

Reddit — subscribed /r/news and /r/worldnews. It's terrible for the comments, but the pressing issues will tend to float to the top. Also, if anything really bad happens, I usually see it on Facebook, MetaFilter, or even HN.

Paul_S 12y ago

You should really ask yourself if you need to. If you're middle class, have a highly skilled job that pays enough money and live in a major city (and you have settled there) in a peaceful western country then it genuinely is a waste of time to listen to the news as it has zero effect on you. But to answer your direct question I listen to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 (6-9am). The reporting is as terrible as any other major news network but has just enough info to keep you in touch with what is happening so you don't feel lost in conversations at the pub.

manish_gill 12y ago

Curated Google News, Quartz daily emails, BBC, LiveMint, The Economist. Gave up on Reddit as a news source quite a while ago. It's a cesspool. For Tech News, HN has been my main source so far, but I'm adding Techmeme to the mix as well. Edit: Yahoo's News Digest app is fantastic as well. Twice a day, it sends me a few top articles that are making the news. And it's beautifully designed. I highly recommend it.

bennesvig 12y ago

I subscribe to NextDraft, which sends me a daily email with top stories. One of the few newsletters I enjoy. http://nextdraft.com/ http://nextdraft.com/

austenallred 12y ago

Tomorrow we launch https://grasswire.com https://grasswire.com to the public. It's in private beta now, but it's a newsroom for the internet. Basically a hacker news full of news junkies and reporters. They ruthlessly curate and fact check the world's most important news. The end result is a daily (or weekly) email that gets sent out. It's digestible in thirty seconds, contains only important news, and has been fact checked by thousands of people to ensure accuracy. No agenda, no celebrity gossip, just facts and sources. I would be honored if you would check it out.

etimberg 12y ago
Looks great, thanks for sharing :)
Paul_S 12y ago
"In February 2015, the news will be completely turned over to you. Access is first-come, first-served. Reserve your space now." How do I do that? It's March and all I can see is that text.
- austenallred 12y ago
  We were going to launch on the 28th, then we realized it was a Saturday. Whoops! So we're launching Monday. Just drop your email in the field and we'll send out an email tomorrow that you're in.
  - spurgu 12y ago
    Email field doesn't show for me on Chrome, on Firefox it does.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - Tinyyy 12y ago
    There is indeed a problem with adblock on the site. It’s funny that I saw the email form for a split second before it was blocked, so I spent the past 10 minutes figuring out how to let it pop up.

DocFeind 12y ago

I would have to say/agree with BBC and NPR radio.

vermontdevil 12y ago

Do you remember any significant news one year ago today? That's why I ignore the general news. Long-form journalism on the other hand is what I read.

chatmasta 12y ago
Yes, actually. MH 370 and Ukraine are two stories that began in March of last year. They're still relevant today. The news is a collection of stories. The big ones last a long time. If you want to sound like an informed world citizen, you should keep up on the big stories. It's not always easy to tell which stories will be big, but if you start following them early, it's easy to keep up with them.
- vermontdevil 12y ago
  Ukraine is big today because it's still ongoing. People have forgotten MH370 already save for that one guy who came up with a wild conspiracy theory about MH370 landing in Kazakhstan. I'm referring to general news that is talked about on a daily basis. Most of them are quickly forgotten.
  - chatmasta 12y ago
    Agreed many headlines are quickly forgotten. Ukraine is still ongoing, and obviously relevant. At what point should someone have started following the story? Does it have to maintain relevance for a minimum time period before it's worthy of following?

igammarays 12y ago

Yahoo News Digest, a notification once every morning and evening on my phone.

troymc 12y ago

Check out the "In the News" column on the home page of Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page For a few pages of quick summaries of all the big political, international, and business news, check out the opening pages of The Economist.

plg 12y ago

NYTimes CBC News Guardian just about covers it for me

d4nt 12y ago

News is an entertainment show. News editors edit actual events into an engaging narrative in the same way that reality TV shows edit the events that occur in their show's domain into a narrative. There is plenty of raw material to work with. On any given day there are wars, injustices, political in-fighting, dishonest or fraudulent behaviour, and amusing stories about dogs on skateboards (or whatever). They're just editing it together. Those in positions of power are so good at manipulating the news agenda too. Everyone from the government to the British Royal Family to Beyoncé to ISIS are at it; essentially pitching stories to news editors in the hope they get picked up. Personally, I try to avoid it. I find news uses fear and outrage too much as a way to keep you watching, and it engenders a sense of hopelessness. Come election time I do some research and vote accordingly, the rest of the time I avoid it.

charlysisto 12y ago
no one lives in a cave here. It's close to impossible to keep away from the noise. After all sharing news is being part of the human community. You don't want to cut yourself from it. However you don't want to get overwhelmed and there's a lot of sensationalist journalism out there that seeks to stimulate your reptilian brain. On the other hand theres' also good (aka rational/analytical) journalism that helps making a sane narrative out of it without getting you stuck in the rabbit hole. Stay close to those whatever side of the political spectrum you find yourself and you'll save a lot of time.

jonathansizz 12y ago

I find some of the comments on here along the lines of 'I don't bother with the news because it doesn't immediately directly affect me' to be a little worrying. In an era where power is increasingly concentrated, centralized and opaque, we need responsible citizens to become more engaged. A prerequisite for this is that people take an active interest in what's going on in the world, even at the expense of their immediate personal interests. You can't avoid politics; if you ignore it you're just deferring to other people who'll make decisions for you. Cynicism is the enemy of a decent society.

DanBC 12y ago
> I find some of the comments on here along the lines of 'I don't bother with the news because it doesn't immediately directly affect me' to be a little worrying. It explains why so many people were surprised by Snowden leaks even though we'd had similar reports for years before Snowden.

dlu 12y ago

The Daily Show. I have no idea what I'm going to do when Jon Stewart retires.

DanBC 12y ago

I read IRIN, Trust.org, and reliefweb. http://irinnews.org/ http://irinnews.org/ http://www.trust.org/humanitarian/ http://www.trust.org/humanitarian/ http://reliefweb.int/ http://reliefweb.int/ Edit: curious that this got downvoted so rapidly when OP specifically mentions wanting to keep track of things like wars, which these sites all cover, while discarding flavor-of-the-week scandals, which again these sites avoid.

mrottenkolber 12y ago
Because HN is the worst possible place to have an exchange of views. Seems like a sensible selection of news sources to me. May I add: The Intercept is nice.

jorgecastillo 12y ago

I follow the RSS feed of multiple newspapers & I read my local newspaper & Newsweek in print. But to be frank news consumption is like any other form of entertainment, don't delude yourself into thinking that the time you use consuming news is time well spent.

joshcanhelp 12y ago

I'm a big fan for Vox's daily news summary. They have a great way of giving relevant information in a compact format. What's nice is that they don't just post to their own site, they curate from others as well.

mrottenkolber 12y ago

I have subscribed to Guardian Weekly, it's... OK. I get easily irritated by incompetent reporters so the fact that I don't regret getting the subscription says a lot of good things about the general quality of the Guardian. As an anecdote: The coverage of a local event (Bonn, Germany) by the Guardian was OK. Not perfect, but not a complete outrage either. And that's a good thing because e.g. the local paper "Generalanzeiger" usually fumbles even the local news in a way so horrific its.... uargh. I have found http://everything2.com/ http://everything2.com/ to be an amazing source of general thought food.

lfx 12y ago

Quartz daily brief are great! http://qz.com/daily-brief/ http://qz.com/daily-brief/ I got news every morning, check the headlines while on commute. News are not too much political, economical, etc, just kind of most important bits. News about Tesla and SpaceX - check. Google, FB and startups - check. Some interesting bits - check. Word in general - check, check, check.

java-man 12y ago

Check out personalized news curated by an AI, definitely not mainstream sources. http://News-AI.com http://News-AI.com