HN Explorer

Ask HN: Would you wait a day for less biased, more reliable curated news?

38 points by awgme ↗ HN
A couple friends and I were thinking of curating news together. Each one of us will tackle on a few topics each day, reading through most of the news of the selected topics, and with a bit of research, select one or more news articles that best describes the event, maybe with a little bit of "the curators context".

The goal is to help each other reach a less biased and more reliable source for news. The challenge is obviously the effect of individual biases, and the time spent curating news may affect the quality as well. One of the biggest trade off is that since we're going through news of the day, the curated news would be delayed, maybe as much as a day.

Instead of just posting them on a facebook group, we're thinking of throwing our curated news as blog posts, so that other people may benefit if they choose to use it.

What does HN think? Would you read curated news for less biased and more reliable information with delayed consumption on the event as a tradeoff? Any idea and feedback is great, as we want to further mature the concept (e.g. setting up some rules and baselines, as well as deciding on how to delegate each topic, etc.) before starting out.

Cheers and have a happy new year!

26 comments

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polygot
I think your idea is pretty cool

I just had another an idea about something tangentially similar just a few minutes ago. It'd be algorithmically curated news with no human intervention: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284875 . Do you think this would be somewhat related to what you're talking about?

wmccullough
I think this is a great idea. Instead of burdening yourselves with the task, why not establish a set of rules and let curation become democratized. I'd argue that the majority of people would follow the rules. Obviously you'll still get the Reddit style trolls who will try to throw it off.
galfarragem
I wouldn't:

- If it is something really relevant it will appear on HN front page with a very short delay. Then, by reading the comments and looking for different points of view, I can form an opinion as unbiased as it is possible to get.

- In addition, for weekly digested news, I can read the Economist.

dfmooreqqq
I usually wait a week for less biased, more reliable curated news (http://theweek.com/)
NumberCruncher
I usually wait a year or more until somebody writes a book about the subject. And I realise that the "random burning issue in the middle east" or the "life story of the next celebrity killed by drog abuse" is not just boring like hell but also totally irrelevant for my life and I do not want to waste my time reading books about this nonsense.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

morbidhawk
tldr; I'm pessimistic about this

This is a hard problem I think. Sometimes news that is interesting and popular is also controversial or just click-bait BS, so you have an ethical vs. interesting news dichotomy. Day-old-news will probably not be interesting to people who already read and discussed the topic the day before. Also consider that if only a few people are curating it there will be other discrediting flaws that might not be caught until more readers see it.

Also, keep in mind that if users get sick of the same kind of articles being posted (which could likely happen given biases of the curators) instead of blaming the users for upvoting (like on HN) they will blame the service instead and will likely stop using the service altogether.

Edit: I could see this working with a small group of individuals that are like-minded to the biases/opinions of the curators.

awgme
Out idea was close to your edit, we're mainly focusing on curating new for our own group, but thinking of putting it on a blog style. If someone may be interested reading it along, we'd be more than welcome to share it.
gpsx
I think we need a single news source in the US that both liberals and conservatives could read. The two sides are living in different worlds, not because one side is reading fake news but because the two sides of the news are given from increasingly different perspectives. Fixing this problem is critical for the well being of our country. I have been waiting for someone to address this.

With that said, I am not sure if the solution you propose fixes that. The small group of curators would just providing a new perspective, probably not one that liberals and conservatives would both like. This is after all what many existing news sources already do. The key is in the group of curators. Maybe a well known group of liberals and conservatives could work on the stories so it fairly addresses the perspectives of both sides?

codeddesign
Impossible. Your own biases consciously or sub-consciously would ultimately skew the curation. Facebook ran into this issue a little while ago with trending topics. If they did it manually, it was skewed. If they did in algorithmically, it was skewed based on whoever wrote the algorithm. The only possible way that I could see this working is if you had 3 columns: Left-wing, right-wing, and relatively unbiased (all news articles are biased simply because editors and news agencies are biased). Within those three columns, you place news articles in the left-wing or right-wing columns, and allow for voting (left, right, unbiased). However, this would also require you to have a large group from both sides voting in order to function properly. Good luck!
awgme
That was what we had in mind! I guess instead of saying we're trying to be "less biased", we should be focusing on "what both left and right-wing leaning news are saying", as long as the information is correct.
brudgers
Curious what would be considered left leaning and right leaning and whether or not an "equal time" approach might reflect a bias.
codeddesign
Correct...The only way around this that I see would be to allow voting in which the crowd would decide if the article would be in the correct column or not.
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joeclark77
The problem with that is that in most cases, one of the two of you will be more talented and get more traffic, resulting in the other guy getting flamed by commenters, etc. For example Sean Hannity's show used to be "Hannity and Colmes", one right-wing and one left-wing commentator, and poor Mr. Colmes was just outnumbered and outgunned to the point that he quit.
bryanrasmussen
It might achieve some popularity but the difficulty of determining correctness or bias or other things without bringing your own bias to the problem will of course mean that the stated goal is not what will actually be the end result.
kahrkunne
I'd be willing to wait, but you probably wouldn't be able to write unbiased news with one day and two people.

Bias is not something you do on purpose, it's something you have to work very hard to avoid.

awgme
We're not thinking of writing a new piece of article for each given topic, but more going towards giving a list of maybe 2 or 3 link to articles that can fully describe the happening of an event.

And as I mentioned in another comment[0], our goal to be "less biased" is to feed readers(other people in the loop) other sides of the story as well, as long as the facts are correct.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13288222

kahrkunne
I think that might be the way to do it. At least, it is what I do; I don't even try anymore to find unbiased news, I just get many news sources of which I know how they're biased.
bbctol
Why would I trust you/your friends as researchers? Establishment journalism has problems, but you're basically suggesting that you do the same journalistic tasks, except one source removed from the truth and without any backing.
DoodleBuggy
In the modern media environment of shock, outrage, and anything for eyeballs, people seem to enjoy indulging in bias and have little interest in "more reliable" because they prefer to confirm existing bias and dismiss any facts that are contrarian to their own existing opinions.

It's going to be tough to overcome that.

tourdeforce
No, I prefer more sites with useful content like HN. MSM is not useful at all.
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zhte415
This is what newspapers are for.
joeclark77
What you're describing is a blog. I wouldn't wait a day for it, since the blogs I follow provide links and commentary within hours. The challenge is to find one that isn't a one-trick pony, i.e. isn't just about one topic like politics.

If you want to launch a new one and be successful, you'll have to find a way to stand out from the crowd. That's probably going to be a "bias" of some kind, or at least a particular philosophy you intend to bring to bear through your commentary.

For example, I would be interested in reading a blog that reports on the news through the lens of black swans and antifragility (see Nassim Taleb's books). It's something I haven't really seen done well.

partisan
It would be a fine idea but I wouldn't exclusively use your service because then I am only seeing the world through your lens. I would synthesize it with the other news sources I use. If your service has an obvious political or social position, then I would ask you to state that upfront as either part of the identity of the site or as part of a disclaimer.