Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

Most news platforms I come across display everything that brings clicks. Its usefulness doesn’t seem to matter. I follow specific people on twitter, follow hacker news, and thats enough. You end up being updated on what matters/truly urgent.

My recommendations as a professional:

The kind of news you want is that which remains relevant tomorrow.

Some news are designed to create cumulative knowledge and cumulative understanding. Search for those formats and make a habit of reading them regularly, but not necessarily daily.

A great example is the economist and in particular its weekly recap.

By the way, I'm not a fan of podcasts because you're not in control when listening. They want you to spend as much time as possible, but you want to skim and skip quickly. Text is vastly superior for that.

I tend to go by the BBC and Hacker News.

In the UK the other mainstream ones that aren't paywalled seem to be a mix of left-wing (eg. Guardian) and right-wing (eg. Daily Mail) outrage/misrepresentation/bias for argument-stoking and click-hoarding, or just local ad-ruined drivel.

I spend all my bloody time reading the news, because I constantly try to procrastinate. It's dreadful.

I want to read newspapers again. I used to do that ~5-10 years ago, every morning.

Aaron Swartz says you shouldn't: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

I currently have two daily sources of news, Reddit and Google News. On Reddit, it's r/worldnews (global), r/politics (US), and r/news (general US). Occasionally I'll look into Ukraine-specific subreddits to catch up on the war.

I don't think there is a massive benefit to skimming the news. I think the primary benefit is that I might see a topic that interests me and I can do a deep-dive on that and learn way more than I otherwise would. Recently, I've done "research" into Iran, the Yemen civil war, the history of taxes in the US, what kind of soil is under Florida and how continued climate change might affect it, flood insurance in the US, the history of Ukraine, Zelenskyy's politics and public support before the war, Merkel's politics towards Russia, Samsung's most popular phones in different parts of the world, chip manufacturing and node sizes, everything about the Surfside condo collapse, etc.

News is mostly clickbait and you won't learn much other than "this thing happened". What interests me most is "why did thing happen" or "what are the consequences" or "who does this affect and how", and that's when I really start to learn. Also interesting is to look into who supports what position and why.

The biggest danger, imo, is becoming jaded or depressed by reading too much negative news. That's when I know I need to take a temporary break from the daily news cycle.

I've stopped reading news 3 years ago. One of the best decisions of my life. Before I was super anxious and had a big FOMO syndrome. Now I'm more relaxed and I sleep better.

If something is really important, I can be sure other will let me know.

If you are in the US, the WSJ has something called the "The 10-Point" which is a curated list of the top news stories for the day, delivered via email around 8am ET every weekday. I subscribed to it a couple years ago on a whim, and I feel it fills me in enough to be "responsibly informed".

I suspect that I'll be in the minority with this recommendation, but I do recommend staying on top of the news. However, a news website is the wrong place to do it. You don't want "what's happening right now", because the immediacy of it means incomplete information and the rubbernecking effect.

Think of it like a sports game. If it's ongoing it sucks you in. If it's over, you hear the score and maybe a couple of stats, and you've sucked everything important. Watching the game might take a couple of hours but the recap might take 30 seconds. For sports there's benefit from watching the game, but for news you want the recap, not the game. You want to get your news from people selling you recaps rather than a play-by-play.

What you want is a good newsweekly. Most of the good ones are dead. The Economist is still going. They're biased but wear their biases proud and up front rather than pretending to be neutral like most everybody else does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events is another great option. Blendle's daily email is one. Several others have been posted to HN from time to time.

Yes, I read the New York Times and a couple of local news journals every day.

I do not think it would be a good idea to just read the titles of articles. I would recommend reading several articles in full each day (it will only take 15 or so minutes). If you were to just read the titles you would be endlessly mislead - focus on the articles you actually read, and forget everything else. Read the articles critically. Think about what questions are not being asked. Think about what perspectives are not being mentioned. Etc.

Currently it’s convenient for me to listen to NPR Radio in the morning with breakfast—make sure California has not fallen into the Pacific due to earthquake, no one has nuked anyone, aliens haven’t landed, etc.

If I’m feeling particularly chipper I can always listen to BBC America.

Afterwards, various podcasts and aggregation sites will put me into my silo.

Repeat

I don't read them (except my industry news) because something like 99 out of 100 those news has no direct impact on my life and because of that are basically irrelevant

And majority of them are sad / annoying / drama-driven and only affect my mood

Reading news for me has no value.

If there's something really important then I will know about it anyway - e.g war, covid, etc.

Feel you. I think it is useful to have some broader context but in the past 10 years, the products have evolved to a place where for me they are no longer helpful.

I donate to local and public media because the work is nevertheless important to support but I consume almost none of the product. Sucks.

That said, as a US-centered person, I recently found this factual email distillation, and do find it useful. Think there should be more of these, locally and regionally tailored.

https://join1440.com/

Read? No. Daily? No.

I do listen to a twice weekly podcast that mostly sums up the stuff worth hearing about. In a world that is instant, and where content must be new to be of value, I think it is best to delay our news consumption by at least days if not weeks, and in some cases probably even months. News (I won't say "modern", I suspect it has always been this way) agencies make money off eyeballs, they do not make money by reporting accurately or with calm and reason. They make money with splashy headlines and inaccurate (if only because it is too new and breaking) ledes. You can fix the inaccuracies next week when the dust clears, but right now it is important to shout about the thing.

All this is create over informed and wrong readers who are anxious about everything. I am married with children, I have enough to be anxious about. I do not need to add to my list of worries, especially with things happening on the other side of the world in a country I have no intentions of ever visiting. I can still empathize with the problems of the world, but my empathy is just as useful to those people today as it is in three weeks when the sensationalist headlines have moved onto the new thing.

Yes, of course. For US news, a mixture of Washington Post, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal - that gets you a variety of views without extremism. I'm not knocking some of the other major newspapers - if I was living in Chicago, Seattle, or another major city I would certainly include a local paper.

For international news and other takes, BBC, The Guardian, and Financial Times work for me.

For Norwegian news (since that's where I'm living), I stick with NRK since that's free - I'd like to subscribe to a local paper, but their prices are insane.

I stopped reading/watching the news at all several years ago (more than 5 probably).

The seed idea was reading this essay: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

It is not that I agree 100%, but it made clear to me that news is entertainment. Not more, not less. Watching a show on Netflix or watching fulfill the same role. And I prefer fiction.

The “understand better the world” part comes from other sources that are not, at all, about reporting the “news”. Books, articles, podcasts on topics that I am curious about.

Occasionally, I do go to the news. But that’s when I want to know something very specific. Like when I wanted to know the results of the elections in my country. I don’t go to the news to “check what’s going on”. I go only when I already know what I want to check. I’ll watch more news now during the World Cup, for example.

Stopping following the news didn’t make any negative difference in my understanding of the world, I believe.

There's a war going on very close to my country, so yes, I try to stay on top of it. Probably too much, honestly.

I do read news regularly. But there are so many "news" and so many ways to go about it. I tend to oscillate - I'll spend a few months reading "slow" news, then a few months reading "fast" news, then a few months break. Not planned, just as my brain/body saturates and craves.

For slow news, there are a few options. There's a quarterly Delayed Gratification magazine that's pretty good. I also personally enjoy Stratfor as a subscription service - understanding their marketing as "civilian intelligence agency" is way overstated, they do present essay-like articles that I find give me background, history, facts, and a bit of forecast that helps me contextualize news.

There's also a weekly Guardian magazine you can subscribe to in physical form which will have a combination of various sources. I've enjoyed it for a while.

For fast news, I like to use combination to give me various perspectives, so my favourites tend to be Axios, Guardian, Al Jazeera, and then a sprinkling of Washington Post, BBC, and my local national newspapers (Financial Post / Globe & Mail / Toronto Star in Canada). Axios in particular is good if you're just starting because you can basically Drill down/through on articles and get context which you'd struggle as you say with plain news agencies.

Note, I've heard good news about The Economist; I've subscribed and tried reading it but it was poor timing due to a new baby; their unsubscribe process was then so incredibly, atrociously, unbelievably, unspeakably user-hostile, that I have made it my mission in life not only to never ever ever subscribe to The Economist again, but to dissuade anybody else I possibly can, on the principle that humanity must prevail and evil overlords should fail. My 100 Croatian Lipa :)

I get a newspaper delivered every day (weekend edition on Saturday). I have found it far healthier than consuming news online (although I do come here for tech tidbits). I also subscribe to a few magazines on different subjects, which I probably find more impactful. Moving back to physical objects for these things has been a real joy. It makes reading news a deliberate act, not a temptation, and also removes the ability to fall too far down rabbit holes. There's also no need to engage too much decision making about content, jumping around, queuing up tabs, deciding what's most important. Just read front to back and skip if you're bored. I also find solving a cryptic crossword on paper with a pencil to be one of the highlights of my day - something for me, by me, where I don't feel I'm in competition with the whole world (which I do if I'm solving chess puzzles online or during the period Wordle was a thing etc).

The most important change for me, however I choose to consume news, is quitting social media. Not being exposed to the Twitter issue of the day, the hysterical overreaction and the hysterical counter-reaction, means that I no longer feel the need to be angry about something all the time. I'll still grumble about particular developments, but I don't feel the need to have a take. I'll contextualise things and move on, unless I think it'd be interesting to my wife or kids.

Absolutely not, it’s dangerous to my mental health in a way few other things are. People will call me selfish for not being engaged, but the cost of engagement is too high for me.

If I hear news it’s a five minute hourly update on Radio 1. Tech news is another beast, I quite enjoy things like HN.

My problem is the source selection algorithm.

Take a big list of possibilities, perhaps a Google search, whatever.

Cross off the corporate "video news release" basically its a TV commercial sources.

Cross off the government controlled / funded propaganda outlets. If I wanted the carefully censored and filtered opinion of the party in power, I'd read their website. "We're going to kiss up to everything our .gov says" is not "reporting" that's mere propaganda not worthy of viewing.

Cross off the attempts to violate election spending rules by producing an "independent" channels that coincidentally precisely mirrors and revolving door employs a political party. I don't want or need someone elses echo chamber, or even worse, my own echo chamber.

Cross off the gasping exclamation point clickbait sites.

Cross off anything participating in "celebrity news" (someone famous-ish in area A said something edgy about area B now post it for the rageclicks). Especially cross off sources focused on people who are famous for being famous but never did anything other than hire a PR firm, or people who have not been relevant in 10, 20, 30 years but are still in the news.

Cross off anything pandering to generational topics. I'm too young to be interested in major league baseball where the average fan is now over 70, and I don't want to be pandered to about video games or whatever "they" tell us "our" generation is supposed to be interested in.

What's left in 2022 after all that crossing out unacceptable sources? Nothing, I'm sad to say. Literally nothing left.

WRT better understanding the world you're probably better off reading history books.

No, if something is important enough it finds its way to me anyways, either through word of mouth or by skimming HN/Twitter/Reddit. I subscribe to a daily news thing that drops in my email and by just reading what the title of the email is I get a sense if anything Really important is going on, and then I just delete it.

I follow Ukraine war and local politics, some national ones.

I tend to stay away from US news as far as possible, unless they leak into common discussions like twitter recently.

I do read news daily but certainly substantially less than a few years ago. I try to consume a "balanced" diet from both left and right news sources and listen in and try to listen in an impartial way. I have a few key observations from all this:

  News is, on balance, very negative. Its designed to stoke your fears and worries. There is no benefit or money in feel-good news, which is why its typically relegated to the end of a news program on TV and almost never on the front page above the fold. 

  A lot of news masquerades as entertainment. Its fine to watch, just be aware its the junk food of content. 

  Omission of supporting facts and context in news is almost as bad as selectively picking facts that spin the story your way. This is probably the most insidious journalistic tactic as it typically helps reinforce outrage without providing the full picture. 

The Economist used to be one of my favorite news sources to counter the trends mentioned above. But I soon realized that they took too many editorial stances on issues were they were quickly proven wrong in days or weeks later.

The right balance to strike with the news is longer-form articles that deep dive into world topics and foster debate within the pages. I think Foreign Affairs serves some of that purpose. But also reading a variety of blogs helps: Astral Codex Ten, Marginal Revolution, etc... Granted, many of the popular ones tend to be left-leaning with progressive agendas. Just be aware.