The author argue for something patently false (reading the news never did anyone any good) instead of some likely true but more pedestrian claim (e.g. most of us would be better off if we read news less frequently) with the goal of drawing attention.
If the events on the news are outside your sphere of influence, it seems like you'd be better off getting the news once a month. Or a year after things happen. At least the facts will be more sorted.
It gives me a sense of the meanderings and movements of large scale entities like corporations and governments and the side effects their decisions.
Wars in Syria tell me about the relations between countries. The Flint water crisis tells me about the failures of small government or even worse the economic state of Michigan.
Data breaches and environmental disaster tell me of the negligence and leadership decisions of large corporations.
You don't really know what's going on. You only know what you're told, and there's many ways to interpret the source data.
You really can't have a good sense of corporations and governments unless you work specifically for a particular company or government and know the inner workings and side effects of what's happening. And if that's the case, you don't need to read the news to learn about it.
You don't know much about the wars nor the relations between countries. You never get to sit in on leader meetings or see first hand what's happening and not happening.
You think you know something about Michigan because you learned about the Flint water crisis. But do you really know what failures took place or the economic state of all of Michigan? What about all of the other crises in America you didn't hear about, simply because the news chose to make you care about Flint and not another crisis?
Data breaches and environmental disasters are often reported in a way that makes corporations seem negligent when other information is left out. This is why there's so much "debate" and "different opinion" on such matters. There's no right answer, yet the news does a good job of presenting a singular narrative.
The news is definitely endlessly intriguing, just like a drug. The worst part about it is you only ever have a very small fraction of the totality of what's going on. Every time we hear about Trump, we're not hearing about local politicians who arguably have a greater impact on our lives.
You can't really be informed about most topics, and it's less likely to be informed the more we focus on matters outside of our local proximity, depending on journalists to translate events with inevitable inaccuracy.
Lots of respect to the man Swartz. Not a big fan of news (mainly the cable) myself but the absence of it is pretty terrifying as well. Whatever is left of little accountability will pretty much vanish.
I'd argue that the problem isn't the news, per se, but the fact that news is a business, with a primary motive of maximizing profit and not necessarily 'informing' the public objectively. But on the other extreme, state run media that do not have the same objective of making profit are even worse.
> but the absence of it is pretty terrifying as well. Whatever is left of little accountability will pretty much vanish.
Did you read the article? It critiques the fast-paced nature of the news and the choice of topics, it doesn't call for abolishing the news.
> But on the other extreme, state run media that do not have the same objective of making profit are even worse.
Incorrect. For instance, here in Australia, we have a state run media channel, the ABC (abc.net.au), and the quality of the news and reporting is much better than the commercial news.
What is it about Americans that make them believe that things that work perfectly well in many other countries (publicly funded television, gun control, universal healthcare) are impossible?
> What is it about Americans that make them believe that things that work perfectly well in many other countries (publicly funded television, gun control, universal healthcare) are impossible?
What gave you the impression that I am an American? I, unfortunately, am one who had to endure the non stop propaganda perpetuated through state run media in my country.
> reporting is much better than the commercial news
How do you decide it is 'much better'? Could it be that you just happen to agree with it? (or not). Since you mentioned America, there are lots of people in America who take Fox News as sole source of truth. And perhaps equally large group who regard MSNBC as such.
And it's pretty interesting to observe that you pulled the conversation right into politically charged topics of healthcare and gun, when I was merely pointing out that news is indeed valuable, and there is always bound to be this friction between the profit oriented but free of government influence vs state run media.
At the risk of sounding callous and uncaring, I will be blunt - I am wary of mental health advice that comes from a person who killed himself at age 26.
I admire Aaron for his technical ability, his unique perspective, his writing, his courage and passion. I sympathize with persecution he dealt with towards the end of his life, and I think that the prosecution against him was unjust. I find myself agreeing with most of his writing that I've encountered.
On the topic of following the news, I am tempted to agree with him as well. However, I wonder if keeping up with the news reinforces the idea that the world can be a scary place, and that if we stray too far outside of the bounds of normal human behavior, we might face hardship. One could argue that that idea is detrimental to human society as a whole, but I think it is generally has a net positive effect on a particular person's mental wellbeing.
The societies we live in are doing insane things for profit and greed, and there is very little compassion for people who make mistakes or who is weak. The way we treat each other is quite bad on this planet.
We are quite insane in how we worship money, power and science.
It could be argued that Aaron was in the prime position to dish out mental health advice, being a sufferer of mental illness. Compare that to mental health professionals who, while educated and more knowledgeable than your average joe about mental health, might not have first-hand insight on practical coping strategies that actually work (as opposed to some of the "let's talk about it -- we're out of time, here's a script").
I don't think that would be a very convincing argument. At best, he would know strategies that helped him personally. A mental health professional would know strategies that help many people cope and have some idea of how to match different strategies to different people and situations.
First hand experience is valuable but the idea that it can't be translated effectively into second/third hand experience by trained professionals is misguided.
It is not that it cannot be translated into knowledge by professionals, it's that they'll never be able to comprehend what exactly is going on unless they've also suffered from mental illness. I can tell you how to catch a fish, because I've read all of the books on catching fish. I've watched fishing tournaments, and I've even helped people get into fishing. But I've never fished before. I won't be able to tell you how to really work the line. I can fill in the gaps, but it's usually not as effective as first-hand account.
There's also the other side that most trained professionals are not equipped to handle serious cases. The lack of literature on quality-of-life increasing treatments for serious illnesses (major depressives, schizophrenics, etc.) is another factor. Most professionals get their information second-hand from textbooks and their education. Then secondly, from practice. Where as the first-hand experience of mental illness is the primary source of practical guidelines for those who suffer from them.
There's also the statistic that around 60% of people with mental illness don't get or stop getting treatment. With schizophrenics and more serious sufferers being on the tail end of that.
>It is not that it cannot be translated into knowledge by professionals, it's that they'll never be able to comprehend what exactly is going on unless they've also suffered from mental illness.
This sentence reads to me like "It's not that professionals can't effectively use other peoples first hand experience , it's that they can't effectively use other peoples first hand experience".
They don't need to know exactly what's going on. It's impossible for anyone to ever know exactly what is going on in another person's mind. Psychology as a profession is completely useless if that's the bar for it being useful.
I apologize if my response comes off as aggressive, but I strongly believe that propagating the idea that mental health professionals can't really help people is dangerous for those that would benefit from their help.
>This sentence reads to me like "It's not that professionals can't effectively use other peoples first hand experience , it's that they can't effectively use other peoples first hand experience".
It was reinforcing the point you were disagreeing with. They can make use of it, but not efficient use of it.
>They don't need to know exactly what's going on. It's impossible for anyone to ever know exactly what is going on in another person's mind. Psychology as a profession is completely useless if that's the bar for it being useful.
To use anecdotes: I've seen assistance from friend's and loved ones, who've experienced first-hand the illness, to have a more profound effect on the quality-of-life and recovery of the person suffering, than the average medical professional (psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, etc. ranked in their own groups). There are some astounding medical professionals out there that will definitely be very helpful in getting someone "back on track," but in my experience, they're never covered under your average joe's insurance. That leaves the bulk of available professionals' quality to be lack-luster, and arguably, a waste of time -- even detrimental in some specific cases.
The bar for doctor involvement and vested interest is nearing the ground, in the U.S.A. Unless surgery or extremely specialized treatment is needed (chemotherapy, gene therapy, etc.), you'll almost always get better care doing the research and treatment yourself.
>I apologize if my response comes off as aggressive, but I strongly believe that propagating the idea that mental health professionals can't really help people is dangerous for those that would benefit from their help.
And I believe if you don't first become aware of shortcomings, you'll never be able to fix problems. And mental health treatment, as an industry, has a lot of problems.
His comment on mental health was peripheral enough that it didn't worry about it.
It was more that he complained about the "The news’s obsession with having a little bit of information on a wide variety of subjects" and then ends with "You should follow me on twitter here."
While I tend to agree with the article, I would note that news media does not scale well. Your local community news website will likely have more pertinent information for you, personally, than the NYT, so it's a bit unfair to compare their utility equally.
Aaron got it all right he just missed one important thing. News is a product and you buy it, so what is it selling you if the content itself is so unimportant?
The answer is news sells an emotion. Mostly it sells outrage and worldview confirmation. Its basically the exact same thing as a social feed only you select it instead of it tailoring to you.
The notable exception are people who use the headlines to make investment decisions.
Does the economist do this? That paper has biases but certainly doesn't appeal to emotion. It does provide worldview support which all other papers also do.
I don't read it daily and I don't follow to the sources typically, but they make a decent job of filtering out all the clickbait and categorizing ongoing events etc. That way I know what's going on rather than just reading about it on social media without context.
The only thing I'm missing is filters and the option to group and aggregate for weekly reading, maybe I'll just script that at some point, should be simple enough.
This is fine, but I want to be an informed voter. My vote, political and environmental donations, and my investment all are related to news. Wouldn't I be abdicating my duty to be an informed citizen by tuning out? How could a democracy function if the majority of voters did this?
Neither me nor the original article argue for abandoning the news, just the hype cycle.
I would say that specifically for voting getting rid of all the crazy polarizing daily clickbait is the best solution. It will make you a better informed citizen if you don't follow that nonsense.
How often do you vote, donate, reinvest? Every day?
Potentially but news, or more specifically 24h/daily news, isn't the only way to be informed, and arguably isn't a very good way to do it.
What are the things you're looking for when deciding on people or issues to vote on and does a catalog of events related to those people and issues really capture it?
Ok, we've done that. (Submitted title was "I Hate the News by Aaron Shwartz (2006)".)
We tend to take author names out of titles because HN works better when the emphasis is on content rather than personalities. It stays on personalities anyhow when a famous person is in the mix, but this tactic compensates a bit.
Plus in Aaron's case the author name is already encoded in the domain name.
I felt like that when I heard the UK was going to vote on leaving the EU. I’d not followed UK news for a while and was so out of the loop that the vote was even happening surprised me.
I didn’t get round to renewing my postal vote as I thought it didn’t really effect me anymore anyway - my new life in the Netherlands was what mattered.
Then Leave won, and Brexit was going to happen. I remember waking up to the news and feeling horrified. Then in the coming days I felt a sense of shock: actually Brexit did effect me, of course. I would lose my right to work and stay freely here in the Netherlands, my home of 8 years. Where I had a family with 4 kids.
The point is I now believe every citizen should remain at least minimally informed and involved on politics “back home” and locally. I vote every chance I get now. And I still regret not voting in Brexit.
You're absolutely right. Come election time, I'll have to reacquaint myself with the politics of my home country, because I might move back there one day and don't want to find it's fallen to pieces in my absence.
I also do keep minimally informed right now, I check the news maybe once a week to see if anything major has happened back home.
I think a voting guide would be more useful in a situation like this that explains the issues at stake on the ballot. If more people used a voting guide instead of the news, I doubt Brexit would have gone through.
I moved overseas. The thing is that politics back home does affect me. If they go absolutely nuts back home (US), that affects how folks approach me here. It can affect travel and all sorts of things. The tax codes affect me since they find it prudent to tax citizens regardless of where they live and work. Fortunately, taxes here are high, but if they weren't, I'd have to pay the US government. The unfortunate part of this whole thing is that I can't really influence politics back home. Technically, I can vote. But it makes me question whether or not it counts, since the form asks me if I plan on living in the states again. I don't think a senator will listen to me, especially since I'm from Indiana and therefore a tiny demographic. I certainly feel taxed without proper representation.
On the other hand, I can vote in local elections here (Norway) since I've lived here 3 years. I just can't vote in national elections (the elections switch between the two, first a national election then 2 years later, a local election. 2 years later, back to national). It benefits me to pay some attention to local politics.
Most news media seems optimised for power users, people who want to read 100 stories a day and have all the context to place them correctly. These are the power users, but, by definition, there are a few. This is the equivalent of everyone who wants to do photography being forced to use an SLR because phones don't have cameras. Or sports cars being the only type of car that exists, when most people just want to get to the office or the supermarket.
How might we optimise a newspaper for the majority rather than the power-users?
- Reduce it to one page, printing only the most important stories. In today's hurried times, that's all many people have time for. Or keep it the same length as today's newspapers, but publish it only weekly. Or a mobile app where each story fits in one screen. Condense it down to the most important facts.
- Give users the context. If a minister was accused of taking money from companies X and Y and he says that he didn't take money from X, say, "The minister didn't respond to allegations that he took money from Y". The majority of readers wouldn't know that unless it's pointed out to them.
- Don't report news that's likely to be irrelevant a quarter from now, like the stock market going up 0.5%, or that Apple is going to launch cheaper iPads tomorrow.
- Report hyperlocal news, like your neighbor 50m away being burgled, not a politician two states away choosing to side with someone else. We all care more about our neighborhood. Tell me air pollution levels in my neighborhood, or a few km away, not 2000 km away in Delhi. We all care about our immediate environment more. In a way, this is the only kind of news people got before technology like the press, telephone or radio was invented. It's odd that in today's world, I'm more connected to what's happening far away than in my neighborhood.
- Quality over quantity: Don't print rumors, unconfirmed news, news without fact-checking it and waiting for the dust to settle. Write well so that readers feel that the writer cares, rather than filler to write 100 words by 11AM, and who gives a damn what those words are.
Neither. Most of these are baseless critiques, in my opinion.
The Economist has a section at the beginning of each issue that gives you a one paragraph or less overview of important events that happened that week. Many people also only read the Sunday edition of the paper instead of the daily publications.
I don't know why the person you're replying to suggest that the news is usually contextless. Pretty much any article I read from WaPo or NYT has all of the context you need towards the end of the article after stating the most recent or relevant facts.
Reporting hyperlocal news is just not feasible in today's media climate. It's very hard to run a successful local news organization because you have to compete with all of the big players.
Most of the news I read does not report on rumors or unconfirmed news, either.
I somewhat agree that news that isn't relevant a quarter from now probably isn't important but it's important to someone. Sure, I don't care if the stock market went down .5% but many people do care about daily fluctuations of their investments or have jobs in the finance sector. Also, why choose a quarter as your time scale? Why not a week, a month, a year, a decade? Who is to say whether yearly stock market fluctuations are actually news worthy?
Maybe news articles in your country have context, but often not in mine. Here's one example: http://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/civic/rejuve... This doesn't give Bangaloreans the wider context: amidst all the talk of lake restoration, have there been any results yet? Has the inflow of garbage stopped, or is there even a plan to? What's the scope of the efforts? To restore lakes to the state they were in 30 years ago, or only to stop further decline? Is there any plan to reclaim any of land that has already been encroached for years? And so on.
Hyperlocal news may not be feasible today, but since there's an umnet need, it's only a matter of time before someone figures out the right business model.
"It might be important to someone" is an excuse to publish any and all news, which is exactly how the media ended up in today's situation.
As for why choose a quarter as a timescale, you can choose some other timescale. Focus on essence of the argument rather than picking nits.
I see Aaron's point, but I wonder that if I take his advice and stop keeping myself informed, I will miss something, and not even know about it.
For example, I read about opinionated software years ago, and when I started my startup, I chose to take that approach. If I'd missed that, and my app turns out to not be great for any single use-case, and fails, how would I know that that happened because I didn't read enough to make a better decision?
These things seep into your way of thinking, and it's hard to know what thought or article had what result.
Having said that, I do think I overdose on news, but it's hard to know what's the right balance.
That was just an example. Instead of picking nits, focus on the real point being made, namely that if you miss some insight or perspective that later causes you to make bad decisions later on, you won't know that if you'd up more, you wouldn't be in the situation you're in.
2 weeks ago I read "Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business" by Neil Postman. It's written in '85 and covers how the emergence of print, telegraphy, television (and now the internet and social media) has changed the way we experience and consume news.
"The medium shapes the message" is was it all comes down to. Modern news is show business. It needs to be packaged as show business or nobody will watch/read/listen to it.
As long as the incentive is to generate ad clicks and ad views, news media will prioritize sensational topics and optimize the format for ad delivery instead of optimizing for knowledge retention.
Orgy porgy is the new Orange. It was just a question of time that the news' focus on the most recent, the most dabbling and the most infuriating will have it basically eradicate itself.
I once read a book where a certain Japanese man could swallow his nose. A different page in the book refuted that it was the Japanese man and stated it was instead his brother who could actually do this nose swallowing. Yet another page retold the initial story again, refuting the story around it being his brother. This is just like reading the news or opening the bible on whatever page.
I'll reiterate my idea here that perhaps somebody should try to build a news site only with news that are "actionable", that is, there is something you can do based on the information.
Examples of such news: In-advance information about meetups, protests. Information about culture events that are to happen. Information about new laws coming into effect, or things mandated by government to a date.
Upcoming votes; "Contact your Representative;" "Commercials should not be louder than the main program as of April 8, 2018. Call this number if otherwise."
I am mostly disturbed by this essay and a lot of the comments. Reading the news is a difficult act indeed. You need to read between the lines, understand that a lot of things are opinion based and that there are a lot of opinions depending on how you look at a problem.
But just because it is difficult and quite imperfect is it a reason why we should stop doing it? How else can we fight inequality, injustice and problems of the world. I understand tat Aaron's point is not to do ignore problems, and his history obviously bring nothing but respect but in an era where "Fake News" is being shouted everywhere, I fear that the message of this essay is a dangerous one.
By disregarding news because of it's limits/imperfections, we expose ourselves to much bigger problems. I force myself to read the news everyday because I think it is my civic duty.
> Some people agree with me on a small scale [...] because they think these are aberrations; that underneath all this, the news is worth saving. I simply go one step further: I think none of it is worthwhile.
I'll be one of those people to agree "on a small scale", but I'll go one (smaller) step further. I don't think these few are aberrations, I think the vast majority of news is not worthwhile. News worth reading is the exception.
> Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times, the gold standard in news.
Is it? Really?
I'm not sure if this is entirely true in general but good local news seems often well worth reading for me. If it's politics, reportage on short term decisions made by local councils will affect my daily life, and are somewhat "within reach". If it's entertainment or otherwise, it's likely about something I could realistically engage with in person, or become involved in, etc.
Quite a lot of local news has certain quality issues, but there are really great exceptions here in my experience.
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[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224858
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051902
Don't we call this clickbait?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It gives me a sense of the meanderings and movements of large scale entities like corporations and governments and the side effects their decisions.
Wars in Syria tell me about the relations between countries. The Flint water crisis tells me about the failures of small government or even worse the economic state of Michigan.
Data breaches and environmental disaster tell me of the negligence and leadership decisions of large corporations.
The news is endlessly intriguing.
You really can't have a good sense of corporations and governments unless you work specifically for a particular company or government and know the inner workings and side effects of what's happening. And if that's the case, you don't need to read the news to learn about it.
You don't know much about the wars nor the relations between countries. You never get to sit in on leader meetings or see first hand what's happening and not happening.
You think you know something about Michigan because you learned about the Flint water crisis. But do you really know what failures took place or the economic state of all of Michigan? What about all of the other crises in America you didn't hear about, simply because the news chose to make you care about Flint and not another crisis?
Data breaches and environmental disasters are often reported in a way that makes corporations seem negligent when other information is left out. This is why there's so much "debate" and "different opinion" on such matters. There's no right answer, yet the news does a good job of presenting a singular narrative.
The news is definitely endlessly intriguing, just like a drug. The worst part about it is you only ever have a very small fraction of the totality of what's going on. Every time we hear about Trump, we're not hearing about local politicians who arguably have a greater impact on our lives.
You can't really be informed about most topics, and it's less likely to be informed the more we focus on matters outside of our local proximity, depending on journalists to translate events with inevitable inaccuracy.
"You should follow me on twitter here."
No disrespect to Aaron.
I'd argue that the problem isn't the news, per se, but the fact that news is a business, with a primary motive of maximizing profit and not necessarily 'informing' the public objectively. But on the other extreme, state run media that do not have the same objective of making profit are even worse.
We'll pretty much have to live with it :)
Did you read the article? It critiques the fast-paced nature of the news and the choice of topics, it doesn't call for abolishing the news.
> But on the other extreme, state run media that do not have the same objective of making profit are even worse.
Incorrect. For instance, here in Australia, we have a state run media channel, the ABC (abc.net.au), and the quality of the news and reporting is much better than the commercial news.
What is it about Americans that make them believe that things that work perfectly well in many other countries (publicly funded television, gun control, universal healthcare) are impossible?
What gave you the impression that I am an American? I, unfortunately, am one who had to endure the non stop propaganda perpetuated through state run media in my country.
> reporting is much better than the commercial news
How do you decide it is 'much better'? Could it be that you just happen to agree with it? (or not). Since you mentioned America, there are lots of people in America who take Fox News as sole source of truth. And perhaps equally large group who regard MSNBC as such.
And it's pretty interesting to observe that you pulled the conversation right into politically charged topics of healthcare and gun, when I was merely pointing out that news is indeed valuable, and there is always bound to be this friction between the profit oriented but free of government influence vs state run media.
I admire Aaron for his technical ability, his unique perspective, his writing, his courage and passion. I sympathize with persecution he dealt with towards the end of his life, and I think that the prosecution against him was unjust. I find myself agreeing with most of his writing that I've encountered.
On the topic of following the news, I am tempted to agree with him as well. However, I wonder if keeping up with the news reinforces the idea that the world can be a scary place, and that if we stray too far outside of the bounds of normal human behavior, we might face hardship. One could argue that that idea is detrimental to human society as a whole, but I think it is generally has a net positive effect on a particular person's mental wellbeing.
The societies we live in are doing insane things for profit and greed, and there is very little compassion for people who make mistakes or who is weak. The way we treat each other is quite bad on this planet.
We are quite insane in how we worship money, power and science.
First hand experience is valuable but the idea that it can't be translated effectively into second/third hand experience by trained professionals is misguided.
There's also the other side that most trained professionals are not equipped to handle serious cases. The lack of literature on quality-of-life increasing treatments for serious illnesses (major depressives, schizophrenics, etc.) is another factor. Most professionals get their information second-hand from textbooks and their education. Then secondly, from practice. Where as the first-hand experience of mental illness is the primary source of practical guidelines for those who suffer from them.
There's also the statistic that around 60% of people with mental illness don't get or stop getting treatment. With schizophrenics and more serious sufferers being on the tail end of that.
This sentence reads to me like "It's not that professionals can't effectively use other peoples first hand experience , it's that they can't effectively use other peoples first hand experience".
They don't need to know exactly what's going on. It's impossible for anyone to ever know exactly what is going on in another person's mind. Psychology as a profession is completely useless if that's the bar for it being useful.
I apologize if my response comes off as aggressive, but I strongly believe that propagating the idea that mental health professionals can't really help people is dangerous for those that would benefit from their help.
It was reinforcing the point you were disagreeing with. They can make use of it, but not efficient use of it.
>They don't need to know exactly what's going on. It's impossible for anyone to ever know exactly what is going on in another person's mind. Psychology as a profession is completely useless if that's the bar for it being useful.
To use anecdotes: I've seen assistance from friend's and loved ones, who've experienced first-hand the illness, to have a more profound effect on the quality-of-life and recovery of the person suffering, than the average medical professional (psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, etc. ranked in their own groups). There are some astounding medical professionals out there that will definitely be very helpful in getting someone "back on track," but in my experience, they're never covered under your average joe's insurance. That leaves the bulk of available professionals' quality to be lack-luster, and arguably, a waste of time -- even detrimental in some specific cases.
The bar for doctor involvement and vested interest is nearing the ground, in the U.S.A. Unless surgery or extremely specialized treatment is needed (chemotherapy, gene therapy, etc.), you'll almost always get better care doing the research and treatment yourself.
>I apologize if my response comes off as aggressive, but I strongly believe that propagating the idea that mental health professionals can't really help people is dangerous for those that would benefit from their help.
And I believe if you don't first become aware of shortcomings, you'll never be able to fix problems. And mental health treatment, as an industry, has a lot of problems.
It was more that he complained about the "The news’s obsession with having a little bit of information on a wide variety of subjects" and then ends with "You should follow me on twitter here."
"Should", not "can"!
The answer is news sells an emotion. Mostly it sells outrage and worldview confirmation. Its basically the exact same thing as a social feed only you select it instead of it tailoring to you.
The notable exception are people who use the headlines to make investment decisions.
I've found that an ok compromise is the Wikipedia current events section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
I don't read it daily and I don't follow to the sources typically, but they make a decent job of filtering out all the clickbait and categorizing ongoing events etc. That way I know what's going on rather than just reading about it on social media without context.
The only thing I'm missing is filters and the option to group and aggregate for weekly reading, maybe I'll just script that at some point, should be simple enough.
I would say that specifically for voting getting rid of all the crazy polarizing daily clickbait is the best solution. It will make you a better informed citizen if you don't follow that nonsense.
How often do you vote, donate, reinvest? Every day?
What are the things you're looking for when deciding on people or issues to vote on and does a catalog of events related to those people and issues really capture it?
We tend to take author names out of titles because HN works better when the emphasis is on content rather than personalities. It stays on personalities anyhow when a famous person is in the mix, but this tactic compensates a bit.
Plus in Aaron's case the author name is already encoded in the domain name.
I still feel that some millionaire should have had stepped forward & paid all his legal dues. He was doing good work.
The way I see it, politics back home doesn't effect me, and I can't do anything about local politics as I can't vote.
It really is liberating to not give a shit about politics, to put it bluntly. It's one less source of stress in my life.
I didn’t get round to renewing my postal vote as I thought it didn’t really effect me anymore anyway - my new life in the Netherlands was what mattered.
Then Leave won, and Brexit was going to happen. I remember waking up to the news and feeling horrified. Then in the coming days I felt a sense of shock: actually Brexit did effect me, of course. I would lose my right to work and stay freely here in the Netherlands, my home of 8 years. Where I had a family with 4 kids.
The point is I now believe every citizen should remain at least minimally informed and involved on politics “back home” and locally. I vote every chance I get now. And I still regret not voting in Brexit.
I also do keep minimally informed right now, I check the news maybe once a week to see if anything major has happened back home.
But also not having 24/7 reality TV disguised as "cable news" blaring all around me all the time helps a lot. US is anomalous in this regard.
On the other hand, I can vote in local elections here (Norway) since I've lived here 3 years. I just can't vote in national elections (the elections switch between the two, first a national election then 2 years later, a local election. 2 years later, back to national). It benefits me to pay some attention to local politics.
How might we optimise a newspaper for the majority rather than the power-users?
- Reduce it to one page, printing only the most important stories. In today's hurried times, that's all many people have time for. Or keep it the same length as today's newspapers, but publish it only weekly. Or a mobile app where each story fits in one screen. Condense it down to the most important facts.
- Give users the context. If a minister was accused of taking money from companies X and Y and he says that he didn't take money from X, say, "The minister didn't respond to allegations that he took money from Y". The majority of readers wouldn't know that unless it's pointed out to them.
- Don't report news that's likely to be irrelevant a quarter from now, like the stock market going up 0.5%, or that Apple is going to launch cheaper iPads tomorrow.
- Report hyperlocal news, like your neighbor 50m away being burgled, not a politician two states away choosing to side with someone else. We all care more about our neighborhood. Tell me air pollution levels in my neighborhood, or a few km away, not 2000 km away in Delhi. We all care about our immediate environment more. In a way, this is the only kind of news people got before technology like the press, telephone or radio was invented. It's odd that in today's world, I'm more connected to what's happening far away than in my neighborhood.
- Quality over quantity: Don't print rumors, unconfirmed news, news without fact-checking it and waiting for the dust to settle. Write well so that readers feel that the writer cares, rather than filler to write 100 words by 11AM, and who gives a damn what those words are.
The Economist has a section at the beginning of each issue that gives you a one paragraph or less overview of important events that happened that week. Many people also only read the Sunday edition of the paper instead of the daily publications.
I don't know why the person you're replying to suggest that the news is usually contextless. Pretty much any article I read from WaPo or NYT has all of the context you need towards the end of the article after stating the most recent or relevant facts.
Reporting hyperlocal news is just not feasible in today's media climate. It's very hard to run a successful local news organization because you have to compete with all of the big players.
Most of the news I read does not report on rumors or unconfirmed news, either.
I somewhat agree that news that isn't relevant a quarter from now probably isn't important but it's important to someone. Sure, I don't care if the stock market went down .5% but many people do care about daily fluctuations of their investments or have jobs in the finance sector. Also, why choose a quarter as your time scale? Why not a week, a month, a year, a decade? Who is to say whether yearly stock market fluctuations are actually news worthy?
Maybe news articles in your country have context, but often not in mine. Here's one example: http://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/civic/rejuve... This doesn't give Bangaloreans the wider context: amidst all the talk of lake restoration, have there been any results yet? Has the inflow of garbage stopped, or is there even a plan to? What's the scope of the efforts? To restore lakes to the state they were in 30 years ago, or only to stop further decline? Is there any plan to reclaim any of land that has already been encroached for years? And so on.
Hyperlocal news may not be feasible today, but since there's an umnet need, it's only a matter of time before someone figures out the right business model.
"It might be important to someone" is an excuse to publish any and all news, which is exactly how the media ended up in today's situation.
As for why choose a quarter as a timescale, you can choose some other timescale. Focus on essence of the argument rather than picking nits.
For example, I read about opinionated software years ago, and when I started my startup, I chose to take that approach. If I'd missed that, and my app turns out to not be great for any single use-case, and fails, how would I know that that happened because I didn't read enough to make a better decision?
These things seep into your way of thinking, and it's hard to know what thought or article had what result.
Having said that, I do think I overdose on news, but it's hard to know what's the right balance.
"The medium shapes the message" is was it all comes down to. Modern news is show business. It needs to be packaged as show business or nobody will watch/read/listen to it.
As long as the incentive is to generate ad clicks and ad views, news media will prioritize sensational topics and optimize the format for ad delivery instead of optimizing for knowledge retention.
I once read a book where a certain Japanese man could swallow his nose. A different page in the book refuted that it was the Japanese man and stated it was instead his brother who could actually do this nose swallowing. Yet another page retold the initial story again, refuting the story around it being his brother. This is just like reading the news or opening the bible on whatever page.
Examples of such news: In-advance information about meetups, protests. Information about culture events that are to happen. Information about new laws coming into effect, or things mandated by government to a date.
Upcoming votes; "Contact your Representative;" "Commercials should not be louder than the main program as of April 8, 2018. Call this number if otherwise."
I'll be one of those people to agree "on a small scale", but I'll go one (smaller) step further. I don't think these few are aberrations, I think the vast majority of news is not worthwhile. News worth reading is the exception.
> Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times, the gold standard in news.
Is it? Really?
I'm not sure if this is entirely true in general but good local news seems often well worth reading for me. If it's politics, reportage on short term decisions made by local councils will affect my daily life, and are somewhat "within reach". If it's entertainment or otherwise, it's likely about something I could realistically engage with in person, or become involved in, etc.
Quite a lot of local news has certain quality issues, but there are really great exceptions here in my experience.