HN Explorer

Ask HN: What are some niche or alternative news aggregators worth checking out?

114 points by crocodiletears ↗ HN
I know this question has been asked before, in one form or the next. But I'd like to make a push to expand my media diet. Are there any domain specific aggregators you use, or are there any promising new plays in the news aggregation space?

66 comments

[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 147 ms ] thread
boramalper
http://lobste.rs

Though it’s not unlike HN so not sure how worthy it is if you are already here.

solarkraft
I like the articles, but would like to be able to contribute.

Do you happen to be willing to share an invitation?

boramalper
I’m not a member either, just lurking.
amerf1
Hey I'm the cofounder of EnergyAnts. Its a news aggregator for the Energy industry. We launched during this batch's startup school. Looking forward to some feedback!

Check it out https://www.energyants.com

arthurcolle
why ants?
amerf1
We dig deep for links to post on the website, we also aim to acquire a lot of user from all over who crawl for info to post. Also Ants it sounds cool!
audiometry
Maybe casual readers will find new things here, but if your target audience is people in energy industry, everyone is already deluged all day long with Reuters and Bloomberg articles. Sorry, but I must say there was nothing in the front page+ that looked unique or novel. Digging up truly niche or obscure news that is closer to being a primary source than a commentary on markets would have more unique value.
amerf1
Thank you for the valuable feedback! That was part of the initial idea to get to being a primary source of news and I believe it would require a good user base that is very involved in the energy industry

Are you involved in energy in anyway? Happy to send you an invite! My email is in the bio

Thank you again for the feedback I highly appreciate it!

VygmraMGVl
Are you only focused on hydrocarbons? Or does that just dominate the Energy Industry as a whole? I visited your site and the front page was entirely Oil / Natural Gas
amerf1
We’re focused on energy in general, but so far the users have been posting about hydrocarbons as that’s trending now considering where the oil price is now and where it’s headed. What did you think of the website

Let me know if you want me to send you an invite (email in my bio)

bg4
I've been enjoying reading KnowhereNews.com which attempts to provide bias-free news.
newswriter99
I stand by SPIDR.

Found it via 4chan. Comments section get get a bit /pol/ but I think it adds a refreshing reminder of what the internet used to be like before we started posting our names and mugshots. http://spidr.today/

martin_a
I set up my own FreshRSS instance and am adding more and more feeds to it. I found that suitable to give me a broad overview over news etc. But you will have to look for sources on your own, that's maybe a problem. Also less and less sites are using RSS/Atom.
smacktoward
The Memeorandum family of products have been the foundation of my media diet for more than a decade now:

Memeorandum (general news): https://www.memeorandum.com/

Techmeme (tech news): https://www.techmeme.com/

Mediagazer (media sector news): https://www.mediagazer.com/

I’m constantly amazed at how many people have never heard of them. To me, they are indispensable.

mgreg
I'd second Techmeme for tech news aggregation; great site and now with a newsletter too.

I actually built a general news aggregation newsletter inspired by Techmeme too (http://enclude.com) which uses ML to group the leading stories of the day together with the highest quality ones highlighted. My hope was to break people out of their filter bubble by exposing them to high quality coverage on the news of the day.

Did it as a daily email because I wanted it to be pushed to me and I wanted it to be limited meaning once you read it you're done. No need to suck up more time.

I've had no time to work on it and its in a state of disrepair but if anyone is interested in teaming up on it let me know.

t_mann
This looks great! Have you considered adding an RSS feed for it?
mgreg
No, it designed for email so there's not a public web site for the news itself but it wouldn't be too difficult to make. As I mentioned, however, this is a moribund service :)
arkades
What’s the political slant? I’m working my way down the memorandum front page articles and getting a very distinctly right wing vibe. Is that the norm, or just a momentary trend?
smacktoward
I literally have no idea how you're getting that. They play it pretty straight down the middle.
[dead] samrosea
are you kidding? The top page is full of Zionist articles.
bradknowles
It seems to me to be all-Trump, all the time.
basch
i prefer the river view for each, similar to hckrnews.com

https://www.techmeme.com/river

https://www.mediagazer.com/river

they also run one just about baseball - https://www.ballbug.com/

the world would be a better place if someone wrote a platform to make your own platforms of these. i imagine a community, like a subreddit, would have a set of rss feeds etc that it follows, a group of people "swipe left or right" on the stories, and the winners move up the page. the difference from other platforms being that stories dont get direct submitted, and that the editorial boards ranking the stories stay fairly small and specialized.

also shoutouts to https://redef.com http://www.aldaily.com https://longform.org https://longreads.com/ https://longreads.com/

Breza
I second aldaily. An amazing website that I've loved for many years.
jyu
I don't know any better way than using an RSS feed and adding unknowing curators for the domains of interest. Then you add and remove curators as you see fit. Journalists, commenters, niche forums, twitter, bloggers can all be added with some one time modifications.

If you like one curator's thoughts on subject X, they might introduce you to interesting thoughts on subject Y or Z.

Another interesting trick I haven't heard other people using is to send the media firehose to a folder, then only checking news that is 4+ weeks old. Aging the stories allows you to sift through puff pieces vs ones that have staying power and remain important.

slenk
What's the best way to find new curators? I am sure there are great journalists on twitter, but I wouldn't know where to begin
ggttuu
One option might be to use an ebook reader called 'Calibre' which also has a news aggregator built-in having over 1600 news sources from around the world.
rcarmo
I used to use Calibre and get fresh news on my Kindle every morning, back when there was no decent coverage in the subways...
scrollaway
I highly recommend Tildes. It's a small, tight-knit community, pretty well moderated. It's currently my favourite news aggregator.

https://tildes.net/

Email me if you want an invite.

aldoushuxley001
The first thread I opened up had a full discussion on how people on the right are either literally nazis or atleast effectively nazis... might be a bit too much of a small, tight-knit community for me.

Not bad looking UI though

scrollaway
I'm @Adys in that thread arguing against that FWIW, and the votes are essentially even. I find that there's very few "empty" discussions, and it's always possible to actually talk to people. But yeah, fair warning, this is a pretty strongly left-leaning site, and you'll have people with pretty strong opinions about it.

Tildes is also a wonderful community outside of political topics. But if you're looking for news aggregators specifically, most news will likely be political in some form, and have people arguing over politics in its comments. Hell, look at HN.

I agree on the UI btw. There's a few themes you can try as well. It's simplistic but practical.

[dead] Kyragem
zerohedge.com (mostly financial news)
rdlecler1
We run AgFunderNews an set up feedit, a HN style channel covering external news on foodtech & agtech

https://feedit.agfunder.com/

fludlight
This is cool but the color theme closely resembles one used by a popular ad network, so the whole site looks like ad-spam.
joeyrideout
Newsmap is my go-to: https://newsmap-js.herokuapp.com/

It's a real-time graphical representation of the most popular news stories in a variety of topics in global or (configurable) regions. Very useful.

Shoutout to the original newsmap.jp which unfortunately requires Flash.

realshowbiz
Bookmarked this. Found that it displayed several stories I had not seen, at a glance. Will try adding it to my phone scroll-hole rotation.
616c
Definitely cribbing that expression!
a1z26
what is scroll-hole rotation?
aldoushuxley001
That's the most unreadable thing I've seen in a long time
rcarmo
I had no idea that was still around, thanks!

It seems to get its news from Google, which means that (just like Google News) it makes a complete mess out of Portuguese news coverage by mixing in Brazilian ones...

[dead] sbhn
Coming soon. HN, but where the funny downvoted comments are in high visibility, and the brown nosing, oh yes i totally agree with the sentiment of the headline comments, well they really are boring, lets nots waste our time. Its called FN, F for Fun, not F@ken
henryboldi
Hey! So I’ve been working on a news app, that like the others curates to your interests, but instead of emojis uses adjectives which are based on criteria. The idea is to filter out sensationalism engendered by the emoticon (and frankly addictive) rating system. Gem tends to recommend articles from the likes of NYT, The Atlantic, Nature, and Nautilus. Please check it out, and let me know your thoughts: https://exploregem.com
thekyle
I've been running Hoxly News for a little while. It's a news aggregator that provides a small crowdsourced summary for each story.

https://news.hoxly.com

justhw
Nice site. Did you build it using opensource software or custom? I'm looking to run similar site for a different niche.
[dead] nairobi222
I set up my own FreshRSS instance and am adding more and more feeds to it. I found that suitable to give me a broad overview over news etc. But you will have to look for sources on your own, that's maybe a problem. Also less and less sites are using RSS/Atom.