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Ask HN: How do you read articles and newsletters?

15 points by zkid18 ↗ HN
Over the last couple years, the level of long-read content has improved dramatically with the rise of independent media and high-quality tech journalism. I subscribe to 40-ish different newsletters and received around ten articles per day. Unfortunately, very few of them I manage to read eventually. Probably that's ok if the news hasn't caught the eye, but at the same time, I feel there is a way to improve the experience:

Unlike traditional online news sources, email newsletters come directly to you—right into your inbox and straight from a writer or publication you know and trust. At the same time, email can be a crowded and complicated place. Newsletters get mixed in with important messages, urgent reminders, and even annoying promotions. I'm thinking of interacting not in a streaming manner but in a slow-paced environment. In addition, the articles in my inbox create personal content storage for me, which I can leverage in future research. Unfortunately, most newsletters are not indexable, so the only way to search is to rely on your email-client built-in search engine.

How are you dealing with that? Sounds like some Gmail management can handle that, but maybe there are some prominent startups in that field?

15 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 44.9 ms ] thread
olivertaylor
I have all my newsletters delivered to address+news@domain.com and filter them into a folder. You could create one folder as a newsletter “inbox” and one as an “archive”.
dossy
I came here to suggest something similar: in Thunderbird, it has this feature called "tags" where users can create their own tags and apply them to messages. Combine that with message filter rules that can apply tags based on matching a set of rules, you can automatically apply a number of tags to messages. Then, you can filter a mail folder by tags, as desired.

Instead of tags, you _could_ have rules file messages into separate folders, but I prefer having all the mail in one folder and using tags that can be applied in a boolean AND/OR method, so I can view "all messages tagged both [Important] and [To Do]" for example. I may have some messages that are important but have no action that are only tagged "Important", or messages that are actionable but not important which are only tagged "To Do" ... but, it's important for me to keep on top of those messages that are _both_ "Important" and "To Do" so I don't let them slip.

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soueuls
I use Feedly premium and treat my newsletters the same as any other form of written content (including HN, Product Hunt)

Each day I go through 300 articles using shortcuts :

n -> go to the next p -> go to the previous m -> mark as read x -> discard o -> open

I do my daily curation this way. I would say I read roughly 5% of the articles/content.

But it's pretty quick and I am aware of new major versions of programming languages/frameworks I use.

New products, interesting newsletter content, etc.

zkid18
Interesting, 300 articles sounds a lot. When do you normally follow this routine (morning, evening, between tasks)?
CrypticShift
> maybe there are some prominent start-ups in that field?

I have one for you. It is called readwise [1].

They recently showed some cool AI experiments [2]. They could eventually solve some of the problems you cited like better search with natural language and better Information overload management with controlled summarization.

Feedly (already cited here) is the mature "News Reader" app. Readwise is the cool “Read it later" app. The perpective is difference, but they do share a lot of features (including AI powered ones)

[1] https://readwise.io/

[2] https://twitter.com/deadly_onion/status/1592990487257829376

CrypticShift
Earlier, I was referring to the "readwise reader" : https://readwise.io/read

This is their new tool (still in private-beta) for reading articles and newsletters. It also does RSS like feedly/feedbin.

3guk
I use Feedbin - https://feedbin.com for both my RSS feeds and email news letters - I find it works really well and allows me to favourite things as and when I wish to read them again.
ahurmazda
I have a slightly different issue. I feel a lot less productive when reading on monitor (laptop or otherwise) compared to say a paper copy. At the same time the amount of content I go thru is fairly large (lots of preprints). I have tried iPad but ends up being distracting. Never found a comfortable path to opening pdfs on kindle. Atm considering giving remarkable tablets a try.
CrypticShift
I also find e-ink devices a lot better for long reads.

Remarkable is more geared toward handwritten notetaking. If you don't need such features and just want to read stuff, the high price is not worth it.

kobo-elipsa (and the all-new kindle scribe) have a similar large size (+stylus writing) at a somewhat lesser price.

Most kindles/kobos (and others too) support koreader [1]. this "app-mod" has a superb pdf reflow [2] mode that makes reading pdfs a good experience even on smaller displays (and these come with an even lesser price tag)

So koreader is the short answer. If you already have a kindle, give it a try. It is open source and easy to set up.

[1] https://github.com/koreader/koreader [2] pdf reflow is the pdf format equivalent to "responsive Web Design".

noud
To put in my two penny worth, although it's not really answering your question: Don't bother reading the articles and newsletters. There is too much information available, and you'll never be satisfied. Fortunately, this is not a problem. In my experience you won't miss much by not reading the articles and newsletters. If it's really important you'll learn it from other people anyways. Instead, use the free time you created to read more in depth topics from (well-written) books. In my view, being a master in a few (news) topics is worth more than being a jack of all trades.
zkid18
When it comes to some niche authors, I have no problem waiting a book from them. In fact if someone were to compose the content of my favorite blogger's blogs in one document and format that would be perfect and that's what I want to pay for!