HN Explorer

Ask HN: Where do you turn for high quality journalism?

19 points by jihadjihad ↗ HN
Upon hearing on HN today that Nautilus, a beloved science magazine, is struggling financially, I thought I'd ask the community about places online or in print to find excellent journalism. Any field or topic is fine--it doesn't have to be constrained to science or politics. I'm just hoping others can find journalistic gems, as rare as they may be today.

14 comments

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sgillen
I believe The Economist to be top notch. A subscription is a bit expensive though.
atmosx
The Intercept, The Atlantic and NYTimes when it doesn't talk about US politics.
taway_1212
Nowhere unfortunately. I accept that all journalism is sub-par and has a an (often well-meaning) agenda.
Tomsredwagon
there is no true journalism in America anymore. It's all done with a political agenda. For the most part the news media is just the political arm of a party, mostly democrat but in some cases the republicans. You have to read multiple sources about the same subject to get a fair account.
auganov
I don't enjoy journalism too much and definitely didn't like Nautilus. But you might enjoy edge.org.

Once a week they have someone successful in the respective field talk about whatever they're passionate about in a philosophical manner. Usually, they happen to be prominent researchers. It's not journalism, but I guess it fulfills a similar need.

akulbe
I saw this question, and was nervous about expressing my true thoughts about it. I was afraid I'd be the outlier in thinking that most modern "journalism" is pitiful, and just a spin machine. Thankfully, others seem to share my feelings.

Interesting thing I read in a book called "The Information Diet" was that many things that happen and that the news also covers are much more boring and mundane than the news portrayal of the event.

A conclusion I came to, after reading that book and some related stuff... news media / journalists... it's one big spin machine. They get attention by keeping you emotionally engaged, usually geared to the respective liberal/conservative agenda, and then get your eyes on ads.

I know it sounds cynical, but that's my take. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

AznHisoka
I meditate and like to think about the world by myself rather than read journalism. I find you can often learn new insights just be exploring your thoughts more.
spcelzrd
Washington Post and The Economist. Can't think of any other examples right now.
ScalaNovice
I make sure that I never read on side. If I read something international on NYTimes, I go to RT.com to read the opposing account. When I read something national on WaPo or NYTimes, I go read the account on Brietbart. If it's CNN, I go read the Fox account.

All these times I pray that these accounts are opposite. The rare times when they match, it's a signal that someone very powerful wants something done. E.g. Iraq war. NYT and WaPo and everybody had proofs that they had WMDs

paulcole
I stopped caring about quality a few years ago. Now I just read things that align with my opinions and viewpoints.

Honestly, it's a lot more fun and makes me feel better.

carlmungz
I sometimes find that reading the comments tells you more about the story than the story itself. I turn to Twitter for my journalism. I don't have a 'go to' source
wayn3
the only way to get a somewhat unbiased opinion is to consume multiple sources, cross-reference everything and ponder the results for hours.

Which is impossible (takes too much time). And kinda lame, because its the professionals job to provide results.

Obviously needs some kind of machine learning algorithm that just takes in all the news and spits out the average.

"Independent media" does not work.

Modern journalists dont make enough money, need to cater to external constraints like pageviews, need to put out way too many stories and are generally inept. Just looking at journalism on physics, you get major idiocies like "the LHC will create a black hole and not only will it create a black hole, the black hole will eat the world and everyone dies". Physics is generally not a hot button topic that people outrage about. Yet they screw even that up. Something really simple where you just have to listen to your interviewee and not apply hyperbole.

Its ok for random folks to not understand what a black hole is. Its generally not ok for a tech reporter to not know his subject matter at all.

The New Yorker writes some interesting stuff. But thats more like reading novels than reading "news".

People claim that pre internet, media was less biased. But I doubt that thats true. It was just way easier for them to be biased because nobody could even potentially fact-check them.