
The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News - hhs
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-urgent-quest-for-slower-better-news
======
steelframe
I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were
being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage
and draw you in to read more and more of it.

I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks
since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court
thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me are
talking about when they discuss some iteration of the most recent outrage. To
some extent it's like they're living in a different culture than I am. I still
feel that it was a good decision, and I continue to ignore the news.

I might come back if enough journalism sources can take the New Yorker's
suggestion to heart.

~~~
slg
It needs to be pointed out that this is an option that originates from
privilege. Ignoring the news means ignoring politics. Ignoring politics is
tacit support of the status quo. The status quo does not put everyone on equal
footing. Disadvantaged people would therefore suffer more from disengaging
with the news than people of privilege.

~~~
old-gregg
I disagree. News != politics. In fact, if I replace the "status quo" in your
statement with "reality", the meaning will change significantly. I don't need
a journalist to tell me that the healthcare situation (to pick an example) is
absurd, or that taxation (fed+state) in some states is already at European
levels, yet without any healthcare or education benefits. It's easy to be
aware of these facts, you just have to be alive.

But I also don't need journalists to be brain-washing people by suggesting
different ways of sharing the costs (insurance? single payer? have rich people
pay for me?). The real solution is, of course, to lower the cost to the levels
comparable to EU countries, but the costs are rarely discussed in the mass
media, only cost sharing is brought up. Why? Because it's an unpopular
solution among people who set the agenda. Fixing health care (i.e. halving its
cost _at the very least_) means dropping US GDP by a whopping 9% [1].

So it's not about slow vs fast news. It's about controlling the public
discourse. The old system of setting the national agenda [2] is obviously not
working well if a populist with a Twitter account can override the MSM
narrative and get himself elected.

[1] [https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-
systems/sta...](https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-
systems/statistics-trends-and-
reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent)

~~~
slg
I don't know what you are intending to mean with your first point. Yes, you
can change a word in my comment to a word with a different meaning and it will
change the meaning of what I said. That doesn't mean what I said isn't true.

Healthcare is really too big and broad of an issue to really highlight what I
am saying here. There is no way not to at least be aware of it if not interact
with it and it has been one of the biggest political issues in this country
for decades. However you can take a look at certain pieces of that to see my
point.

For example, a tiny minority of people reading this have any reason to know
the price of a month's supply of insulin is over $450 or that 1 in 4 people
with diabetes are rationing themselves insulin in order to afford the drug.
But more and more news stories are highlighting this issue which is leading to
political pressure to address it. Just today there was a congressional hearing
on the subject. I have no idea if something will be done to reduce the costs
of insulin, but I know the price wouldn't go down if people just ignored every
news story about it.

~~~
old-gregg

       > I don't know what you are intending to mean with your first point. 
       > Yes, you can change a word in my comment to a word with a different 
       > meaning and it will change the meaning of what I said. 
       > That doesn't mean what I said isn't true.
    

By using the inflammatory vocabulary, you've re-framed the issue as a class
conflict, pushing the proposed solution (ignoring the news) out of scope. This
is a classic move straight from Animal Farm. I simply suggested to re-read
your comment using less polarizing language. This re-focuses us back on the
original proposal, and suddenly we may realize that not listening to sponsored
"suggestions" proposed by the media may have us voting for (using my example)
a working healthcare system, which would be great for all people,
disadvantaged or not.

~~~
slg
I really don't know what to say to you if you think "status quo" is
inflammatory vocabulary. And I never said anything about suggestions from the
media. You are mixing fact based news with opinion based news. You can be
informed by ignoring opinion based news, but you still need fact based news to
have an educated opinion on an issue.

~~~
hyeonwho4
The problem is not jargom, it is tone. If we criticize the ideas instead of
the people we can reach an understanding. But by using "you" it becomes more
personal and more inflammatory.

~~~
slg
I didn’t criticize the person or use “you” in my initial comment so I don’t
know what you are talking about.

------
ljm
I've had several discussions about this and, as inhumane as it might
sound...I'm not sure what value news has in its current form. I don't feel
like I'm learning more about other humans, I'm just being spoon-fed a
carefully crafted narrative.

If the purpose of news is to disseminate useful information then it has
failed. It's now about opinion, entertainment, advertising and maximising
engagement (usually by getting people pissed off because misery loves
company).

There was a recent story in the UK about a young man from the North West who
plotted to murder an MP, who also happened to be a paedophile and a white
supremacist (according to reports). Most of the news is a dramatic retelling
of how a young kid could get to that point so soon. Our national broadcaster,
the BBC, gave him the gift of notoriety and I can't imagine what that has done
to his ego except to say he was right.

That isn't news, it's fetishising a burgeoning problem in our politics and
titillating readers.

Upskirting celebrities getting out of cars and getting sly bikini shots from a
telescopic lens somehow has more priority over proper investigative journalism
that can have a positive, legal outcome.

In a more simplistic way, we revel in the pain of other people.

------
sorenn111
Amen, faster and more frequent news is certainly broken. However, I worry that
we are fighting against human nature.

The use of smartphones has demonstrated, I believe, that people will blindly
chase their dopamine hits coming from a variety of formats because it is
ingrained in human nature. The dopamine reward pathway gives a good feeling
and people are naturally inclined to follow the path of least resistance to
more hits. If an organization or app tries to fight this, then people will
simply use it less. People will naturally gravitate towards (thus pushing the
market towards) easy methods of getting a little dopamine rush.

The consumption of fast and frequent journalism is just a symptom of human
nature and I have my doubts that there will be a unilateral disarmament by
apps and companies to use such tools.

I personally try to recognize this and cut myself short when i keep scrolling,
keep refreshing on my phone, etc. However, I am not that good at stopping
myself and I am aware of when I do it and work on it. What about people who
are unaware of their habits? Looking down at your phone and refreshing likely
has become second nature for billions of people.

How can industries fight against this human nature? (I did not cite any
sources I know, if I'm dead wrong on any points please let me know!)

~~~
stcredzero
_The use of smartphones has demonstrated, I believe, that people will blindly
chase their dopamine hits coming from a variety of formats because it is
ingrained in human nature. The dopamine reward pathway gives a good feeling
and people are naturally inclined to follow the path of least resistance to
more hits. If an organization or app tries to fight this, then people will
simply use it less._

The way this has been resolved in the past, is that the "trash" news is
relegated to the riffraff, and more reliable sources of news are used by the
wealthy. The problem, is that even the mainstream news was of the trashy
click-bait variety, even in the past going back many decades, if not hundreds
of years. Even the news sources that are supposed to be higher end will
succumb to the greater speed and greatly accelerated news cycle.

 _How can industries fight against this human nature?_

Industries need to have faith in basic human nature. They need to let
everything go viral and stop picking winners and losers. Sunlight is the best
disinfectant, after all. We need to have faith that the truth will eventually
win out. In 2019, when there has been suppression of speech, that has merely
given ammunition to the toxic voices. This also takes the form of bad actors
pretending to be on the side of the angels, acting in bad faith by using
emotional tactics which act to hide the truth.

Contrarian voices need to be protected. This is precisely what Freedom of
Speech is for. Lots of those are going to be toxic, but some of them are going
to turn out to be valuable. In the past, Freedom of Speech meant that bad
messages could be discredited on their merits. The problem in 2019, is that
people are trying to do end-runs around Freedom of Speech not through
argument, but through reputation smearing and de-platforming. Basically, short
circuiting Freedom of Speech by hacking the right to hear. Do this for a good
message, and it only de-legitimizes the good message and gives ammunition to
the bad ones.

~~~
gipp
> Sunlight is the best disinfectant, after all.

So, I had never heard this phrase until maybe a year or so ago. Now it seems
like (on this site particularly) someone parrots this exact sentence in any
thread at all related to news and/or social media.

Where is this coming from? Especially since it is... _Emphatically_ untrue.
It's just another one of those turns of phrase that asks you to believe it
purely because it's so pithy.

People have studied this. A lot. It's just not true.

~~~
stcredzero
_Especially since it is... Emphatically untrue._

Citation?

As far as I can see, people like the KKK and other White Supremacists have
been and still are thoroughly discredited. The only countervailing force to
that in 2019 is outrage driven media, produced by other extremist
counterparts. If one's business is based on outrage, then you want an enemy to
play off of, to generate a vicious circle of outrage and reaction and counter-
reaction.

Do most people actually think of the "Ok" hand sign as a Nazi signal? Absent
the media spamming this idea, I highly doubt this would ever have been
considered anything more than a stupid joke by the mainstream. The reason it
spreads, is precisely because it acts perfectly as viral outrage clickbait.

Also, the counterparts on the Far Left also seem to demonstrate the truth of
this, through their use of smearing tactics and de-platforming. If anything,
they seem to fear the disinfecting qualities of sunlight, the most!

~~~
0xDEFC0DE
>Citation?

'Sunlight' from the press doesn't necessarily do anything in a court of law,
which is the actual thing that is supposed to disinfect society.

A bomb-shell story which drags a corporation or white collar criminal through
the mud won't necessarily lead to successful prosecution.

And using sunlight to simply damage a reputation has been used as well. It
depends if you believe it's sunlight or not, so we just go back to old-hat
media problems.

~~~
stcredzero
_And using sunlight to simply damage a reputation has been used as well. It
depends if you believe it 's sunlight or not, so we just go back to old-hat
media problems._

So let there be a "Free Marketplace of Ideas." This is again, precisely why we
need Free Speech! It's when our society lets someone be the arbiter of what's
allowed to be said and heard, that we run into problems.

~~~
0xDEFC0DE
Well, we can't uninvent the technology of the day, so that's likely to end up
like unregulated social media, but we know there are issues with
disinformation easily reaching a large number of people (again, old-hat
propaganda, just we don't have to throw pamphlets out of planes now).

This isn't an easy problem to solve and I certainly don't have the answers.

------
chiefalchemist
Actually, what we need first is:

1) A common and agreed upon standard definition of news.

Facts alone are not news. News also has importance and relevance. It's not
news simply because a (major) "news" outlet publishes it.

I ate eggs for breakfast. That's truth / fact. It's not news.

2) A common and agreed upon standard definition of journalism / journalist.

Again, working for a "news" outlet does not make you a journalist. Journalism
is a verb. It's a series of actions. It's not a (self-anointed) title.

3) Transparency and full disclosure about what is news (objective) and what is
op-ed (subjective).

True story: I've seen a friend who has formal higher edu training in
journalism (major'ed or minor'ed, I don't recall) take a (political) position
on FB and then back up his "facts" with an op-ed piece. This isn't uncommon.

Edit: Typos

~~~
Zaphods
I'll take a stab:

1) News is an account (story) of an event. The degree with which it is "true"
is the degree with which it holds the events to account, and the degree with
which the news organization/publisher holds itself accountable for that
account/story. Good news is accountable and provides accounts of events.
"Truth" is the wrong focus; "fact" is far too malleable (hence the status-quo
legitimacy of "alternative facts"); accountability is the goal.

2) A journalist is someone who writes accounts/stories for a news
organization/publisher and, in turn, is held accountable (either
professionally or legally) for their story. Anyone can be a journalist, but
few are willing to hold themselves to the standards of accountability good
journalism demands.

3) The division between news and op-ed is marked by the degree and nature of
accountability. News organizations are accountable for the news. News
organizations call for op-eds and those op-eds have a different standard of
accountability. That's why we call them op-eds. If a news organization will
not hold itself accountable for a story then it is an op-ed.

We are far too focused on "truth" "fact" and "objective vs subjective".
Instead we should focus on what the _use_ of journalism and the news is. The
use is _accountability_. And the special nature of news and journalism, what
differentiates it from fiction and bullshit, is that it is also held to
standards of accountability.

~~~
chiefalchemist
1) Being an account of X isn't a high enough bar. 100% of what I see on "the
news" is an account of something. The problem is, the line between TMZ and Fox
or CNN is less defined.

2) " but few are willing to hold themselves to the standards of accountability
good journalism demands."

Well yeah. But it's because the dentition of journalism has become "anything
done by self-proclaimed journalists." It's entirely self-serving. There is no
higher standard. Mainly because the pot is afraid of calling the kettle black.

3) We might call them op-eds but plenty of "news" orgs are all too comfortable
presenting their op-eds as news and/or journalism.

~~~
Zaphods
You have wedded your opinion of US news organizations to your definition of
the news. Those two can and should be kept seperate.

1) Being an account is all the news is. It's a story. The division between TMZ
and Fox and CNN is defined. They are all news organizations. They differ in
the nature of their accountability and the degree with which they hold
themselves accountable for their stories. They show this in their willingness
to retract, correct, or stand by stories. And they have a history that we can
judge. You already show that in your opinion of them.

2) Anyone can be a journalist. Just as anyone can be a scientist or a
programmer. But to do those things, to be considered a professional in those
things, is to hold yourself to a certain set of standards, that is, to hold
yourself accountable. I have read excellent and insightful journalism in a
newspaper just as I have read it on a local blog. In both cases they have
acted with professionalism. I have also seen the inverse, in which case I
don't consider them credible journalists or their news to be credible.

3) That's a completely credible criticism of many news organizations. That
however, does not target my definition of news, that targets the use of op-eds
by news organizations to evade accountability. In which case, they are bad
news organizations and you would be justified in considering them as such.

However to insist on 100% "truthfulness" or "objectivity" leads to a
metaphysical paralysis where news or journalism is impossible. Show me an 100%
true and objective news story? You can't (or you could show your fact from
your parent comment, but, as you admit, that is not news). Because it has
never been like that, nor need it. Instead we can be pragmatic and demand that
the news be useful. what the news is is its use. That use is accountability.
Because neither I nor you can be everywhere at once. To overcome that, we rely
on news, on accounts of events. But, in turn, we can also, as you have, insist
that we have good news and criticise those that are not useful (a Fox News,
for instance, that insists on only holding one party accountable).

------
gumby
Slow news still exists, and always has. Weeklies and monthlies are low pass
filters.

In my teens I was an avid news reader and then I heard the aphorism "as
worthless as yesterday's news" and I realized: if it won't be useful tomorrow
I most likely don't need to know it today (obviously there are a few
exceptions, like road closures). And I started to read news sources that
reported with higher latency (CSM used to send its small, 7-page newspaper
though the _mail_ ) and discovered I really never missed anything important.

------
_cs2017_
The article and the comments express the desire for news to be an effective
tool to inform and educate the public. While appealing, this idea has never
worked in the past, and there's no evidence that it can work in the near
future.

The reason is not that the media or the journalists do something wrong.
Rather, the vast majority of the public is simply not interested in being
educated or informed.

You can send the best art / math / business professor to a school, but if the
students are not interested in that field and have no need for a good grade,
there will be very little learning done.

The public is quite capable to take any information they are offered, and
convert it to an argument in favor of their political or social beliefs; it is
also very capable, when given a choice, to select the lowest quality
information.

It's unclear to me how anything can be done to counteract those tendencies.
And as long as these tendencies stay in place, it seems rather futile to
discuss "better news".

~~~
matt4077
This sort of cynic pessimism is getting out of hand...

By most any measure, today's western democracies are the best place, and time
in history, to be alive: life expectancy, crime, food availability, mobility.

This is also true of education and "being informed", although those are harder
to measure. But literacy rates, high school and advanced degree proliferation,
books being published, and of course internet access should be decent proxies.

That's not even including the vast improvements people who aren't white, able-
bodied men have seen. Just ask around among women over 70 and you will find
plenty who wanted to go to medical school and were stymied for whatever
reason. My mother was told that, yes, she can matriculate. "But as long as I
am professor, no woman will pass [some required class]"

~~~
jjulius
None of what you wrote addressed the point of the comment you were responding
to, which is that it's hard get people to be informed about the news if they
just don't care. I'm not arguing that what you said is inherently wrong, it
just doesn't have anything to do with the question at hand.

The OP wrote that, "You can send the best art / math / business professor to a
school, but if the students are not interested in that field and have no need
for a good grade, there will be very little learning done." Let's take that
and combine it with the women going to medical school that you referenced.

OP is suggesting that the women going to medical school might put all of their
effort into the classes that directly pertain to their field. But if they need
an elective class (let's say, some kind of art class, for instance), then they
might go into that and put forth the lowest effort possible to achieve a
passing grade if it doesn't interest them. OP's suggesting, and rightly so I
believe, that the general populous does the same thing with politics. Those
that care about it invest more time in reading about it, while those that
don't care about it won't invest more time in reading about it and will
typically choose the lowest-effort, easiest-to-digest sources of news.

Going back to OP's original question, how to we counteract those tendencies?

~~~
matt4077
The best proxy for "interest in politics", specifically, would seem to be
voter turnout:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections#Turnout_statistics)

That data shows only modest changes since 1940, and no discernible decline in
the last decade or so. If anything, turnout was lower in the 80s and 90s,
slightly higher in the 60s.

~~~
jjulius
I feel like I understand what you're getting at with that data as it pertains
to "interest in politics" at a general level, but I'm not sure how you intend
to use that data in this specific conversation. OP and I are wondering how we
get the general populous to invest quality time in educating themselves about
the news/politics, subjects many people don't care about. How does the data
you provided correlate with that conversation?

~~~
matt4077
I don't know how much more data I should offer, while your and OP's position
is basically "everything was better in the past".

The New York Times has seen subscriptions quadruple from 1988 to today. (two
charts needed for this timespan:
[https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/oimg.png](https://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/oimg.png)
and [https://secondmeasure.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NYT-
Cha...](https://secondmeasure.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/NYT-
Chart-1f.png))

------
vanderZwan
Somewhat surprised that there is no mention of The Correspondent yet. The
Dutch version has been quite successful for quite a few years now, and they're
launching an international version later this year[0][1].

(Having said that, the authors of De Correspondent sometimes come across as
oblivious to how their world views are shaped by living in the cultural bubble
that is the Randstad[2]. There is a certain arrogance to the writing style
that just makes it feel like the kind of thing that people living in Amsterdam
would write, and it sometimes rubs me the wrong way. I guess that makes it the
Dutch equivalent to the New Yorker.)

[0] [https://thecorrespondent.com/](https://thecorrespondent.com/)

[1] [https://decorrespondent.nl/](https://decorrespondent.nl/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randstad)

~~~
sejtnjir
I subscribed to the Correspondent based on the proposition of in depth quality
journalism until it decayed into long form leftist outcry and nothing else. I
wonder if this type of decay is inevitable.

~~~
vanderZwan
As long as one remains oblivious to their own biases the rest of the world
will appear to be wrong all the time.

------
blackbrokkoli
I think that there is an often overlooked product that solves this problem
very well by it's very nature: Weekly newspapers.

Especially when you read them as paperback they take out all the haste. You
can't "refresh" them. The style tends to be less lurid, because it is
pointless to write an hot article with Tuesday's information if you print on
Sunday. Topics are way more broad in my experience but still capture the
Zeitgeist of current topics in whatever culture you live in (it has to be a
good newspaper, of course). There is of course a certain desire to read
everything, since you paid for it, but it's finite: It is not a permanent rat
race to read all the news, when you're done, you're done.

Even if you don't use whatever paper you get to it's fullest, you will still
realize: You do not actually become an "informed voter" by knowing the exact
updated body count of some colorful tragedy on the other side of the world.
Reading one well researched multi-perspective article with depth will do just
fine!

------
blablabla123
I don't think this is a problem of the media but rather of the consumer. In
the pre-Twitter time people used to be concerned about those consuming only
tabloids or trash TV news. At best, possibly even none at all.

In fact the offer of "slow news" is so much larger than "fast news". The New
Yorker is actually an example of very slow news ;-) Also on TV/Web streaming
there is a lot of slow news like BBC News for instance. The truth is most
people find this too boring, they are just not interested in Politics. Maybe
new formats like VICE are improving this.

Maybe this problem didn't even got worse but it just became more visible in
the age of Google News where you suddenly see that you can read the same
article on 200 different news pages - sometimes just copy&pasting from
Reuters.

And yes, news is always biased. That's why one should read different sources
with different biases... That's a very time consuming task if you are only
consuming slow news.

------
p1itopre
I noticed some time ago that I do not learn more about a topic the more
frequently I check on it (i.e., multiple times a day).

So, I make it a point to only visit websites that update daily (e.g.,
[https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper](https://www.nytimes.com/section/todayspaper))
or weekly ([https://asia.nikkei.com/Print-
Edition](https://asia.nikkei.com/Print-Edition)). I also started to read news
in the morning for 15-30 mins from a paper subscription (Financial Times).

I hope this kind of news consumption catches back on.

------
thewordis
I subscribed to Delayed Gratification quarterly for this purpose.

[https://www.slow-journalism.com/](https://www.slow-journalism.com/)

~~~
sevensor
This is the first I've heard of Delayed Gratification. That's a hefty
subscription price -- is that their main source of revenue?

~~~
leoh
Is it that hefty? I'm seeing a price of 55 GBP for the US.

~~~
sevensor
Works out to almost $20 per issue for a quarterly. So it's a lot more per
issue than _Time_. Not saying it's not worth it. ( _Time_ is for dentists'
offices and bird cages.) My comment about cost isn't a gripe, just an
observation about their business model. It takes real belief in your product
to charge that much for writing, when we're so used to getting it for free.

------
eaurouge
I see a number of comments celebrating the choice to live in a bubble
uninformed and blissfully unaware of local and global events. Admittedly, a
number of news sources are quite bad at actually reporting the news. But there
still are quite a number of news organizations and news reporters that take
their roles seriously. You can find them, that is if you are actually
interested in being informed.

I'm sure there's some virtue signalling going on here, similar to the "I don't
watch TV" from years ago. It just strikes me as odd that people will gloat
about their ignorance, on HN of all places.

~~~
ycombinete
I find comments like this unhelpful. You have made a point, without any real
counterpoint. If you wanted to be helpful, instead of doing your own little
"You can find them, that is if you are actually interested in being informed"
virtue signal posturing, why not post the name of a single such source which
you find valuable?

I would sincerely be interested in knowing the sources of some great news, so
please share. Until then all your comment amounts to is an insult, without any
substance.

~~~
WheelsAtLarge
The Economist does a good job of informing and analyzing the news. That and
the Sunday newspaper will give you enough info to stay informed. There is
still plenty of fluff but at least you get to choose what you consume.

Just keep in mind that most news is useless and meant to entertain and hold
your attention but give you little to no benefit. Also, note that it has a big
impact on your mental health and not for the better.

------
makecheck
Unfortunately this is one of those things where if 99 media companies agree
and one doesn’t, all the attention will go to the one that claims to have the
latest “scoop”. The story will be completely undeveloped, half the stuff they
say will eventually be proven wrong but they will get _all_ the views. And
therefore, gradually, the other 99 would follow suit to stay in business.

As long as money/advertising is so lucrative when so much trash is funneled so
quickly, this will be a problem. We pretty much have to find a way for
companies to gain as much money some other way, e.g. “I’m a billionaire, I
will give half a billion dollars to the station that wins a quality journalism
award”.

If you’re an individual and not a media company, waiting awhile for the full
developed story is definitely better.

Heck, waiting awhile and unplugging works for lots of things. For instance, if
you can convince yourself to ignore a hot new TV show for a year (so that it’s
“new to you” a year from now), it’ll probably be cheaper; and, you can benefit
from average ratings and other info to tell you if the show/season turned out
to be not worth watching at all.

------
Animats
That's what the Economist is for.

~~~
dangravell
The Economist is good, but I find it still a little too frequent for me,
especially considering it costs about £5 a week. This for me is a little too
much for something I probably won't get through every week. I tend to just buy
it when I go on holiday when I know I have the time to get through it.

I'd prefer a digest version once a month, the same size as the weekly version,
with "more important" news and the same cost.

~~~
clydethefrog
Le Monde Diplomatique is a monthly newspaper that focuses on international
reporting. I find their reporting very good, although they are outspoken about
their leftist position (just as the Economist is outspoken liberal).

[https://mondediplo.com/about](https://mondediplo.com/about)

------
alehul
Personally, I found it helpful to view information consumption like this:

All information has a time horizon over which it is likely to be valuable. For
some outrage news stories, it's just a few hours, while for more thoughtful
political analyses, it's a year or two.

Even if you read voraciously, if you're consuming information with a short
time horizon of value, you're going to be facing a constant downward momentum
of useful knowledge, as the information you know becomes outdated or
irrelevant.

Focus as much as you can on reading content that will be valuable for the
foreseeable future, and you can avoid that downward momentum of information
'expiring'.

------
truebosko
I stopped using Twitter to help slow down my news consumption.

Then I found I was reading the same thing each day on the front page of
NYTimes, Guardian, my local papers (Toronto)

Now I check every few days, but I adore the sub sections on NYTimes. Wether it
be food, technology, science, opinion. All fun to read and "slower"

------
alexmingoia
Skip the news entirely. What value does it add to your life?

I’m happy reading blogs and periodicals with my RSS reader (feeder.co), which
I check in the morning over coffee. I choose what’s in my feed, not some
algorithm, advertiser, or news editor vying for clicks.

~~~
OJFord
Do you know if feeder.co supports mathjax/similar in rendering?

------
UI_at_80x24
I found I liked watching news after I got a police-scanner and could listen to
things as they happened. Police/Fire/Ambulance scratched the itch of "what is
going on right now" better then the news of 'What happened yesterday' that the
media offered.

It also had the added benefit of being LOCAL, when my local news mostly
covered tidbits of national interest.

I'd still tune-in to local radio to get the followup or fuller-details of an
event.

------
galfarragem
The sweet spot - like in most phenomena - seems to be in the middle: for trend
correction we need informed people, not people addicted to trivia, neither
people that only care about their own belly button. From a stream of 'news' to
History essays, there is a place somewhere in the middle for monthly/quarterly
'digested news'. Even weekly news (like the Economist) seems to be too much.

------
Accacin
I try and avoid the news whenever possible. Nothing good can come from it. I
do however subscribe to a newspaper/magazine called 'Private Eye' that comes
out fortnightly. Let's me catch up on the important news :)

~~~
specialist
I would like a "fortnightly" version of HN, reddit, etc:

Show me the popular stories from two weeks ago, after things have settled
down.

I really only want the conclusions vs the real time updates.

It'd also help mitigate my compulsion to participate.

~~~
noyesno
Check out hackernewsletter.com. The only downside is that you will be too late
to add your own comments.

------
araker
I've stopped follwing the news cycle 4 years ago. I realized it wasn't a
proper source of information. News needs to be published fast, so there is no
time to do a proper source check. It it short, so there is no room for other
views. It needs to be simple, easily understood, so it uses the dominant world
view as a frame. News needs to get attention/clicks, so it is focussed on
negative events, creating a skewed view of the world.

I only read analysis, long reads, investigative articles and news sites that
do not focus on news, but on (global) developments. A good example is
[https://thecorrespondent.com](https://thecorrespondent.com) (english version
not active yet), I'm a member of the dutch version and I really enjoy reading
investigative pieces about our tax system, healthcare, forgotten dutch
histories and so on.

All in all I can say that when I stopped following the news cycle, the mental
clutter really reduced and it made me feel better.

------
skrebbel
Just want to quickly namedrop
[https://thecorrespondent.com/](https://thecorrespondent.com/) who are setting
out to do exactly this (and have been doing it for some years already in the
Netherlands). If you're interested in slower, less emotionally charged news,
consider signing up.

------
ilaksh
A big source of the author's complaints actually is that there is a lot of
news that comes out that opposes his worldview.

To me that area is more the problem. Most of what's counted as news comes from
one somewhat extreme worldview or another. Usually it depends on the
organization. Certain publications consistently come from the left and others
consistently from the right and maybe there is a third category which is
coming from a different direction. And actually left/right are not exact, but
it seems as though people are polarized into two or maybe three camps, with
often completely different worldviews in each of them.

It's actually like people are living in completely different universes. Each
group is convinced that theirs is the true universe and the other is almost
entirely false.

More in-depth articles could theoretically help by creating more opportunities
for supplying factual detail and nuance. However, almost all of the in depth
articles I see are clearly coming from one of the extreme worldviews.

I guess tests might be, can what you are reporting be verified in anyway, and
would someone with a different worldview be able to gain information from it?
Does it seem impartial.

To some degree it's an almost impossible task because even basic perception is
tinted by worldview. But news can try to stick to uncontroversial facts and
avoid assuming that other worldviews have no validity.

The other aspect is that the monetary incentives push them towards feeding a
particular worldview rather than taking a chance of contradicting it with
something too nuanced.

My guess right now is that there may be a way to improve the availability of
truly primary sources of information by taking advantage if the internet. That
can eliminate the bias that many news outlets would take on interpreting
events.

Politics seems to be the most difficult case but also the most important.

Maybe it would help for people to realize that they are occupying parallel
universes.

------
etep
I have a theory that news occurs with a far lower frequency than people think,
far lower than even when people try to account for their knowledge of the 24
hr. news cycle. In my theory, most of what counts for news, is either a story
update (737 Max stories), or not news (say Trump "news").

My hypothetical news organization would strive to identify the unifying
element of a given news item, and then keep one article about them. The
article would include the following elements: a summary, a timeline, a fact
set, and a commentary or critique. All subsections would be allowed to evolve,
but the "story" would be one thing.

I've considered trying to self fund this somehow, but I've never convinced
myself that it would really get traction.

~~~
asteli
Have you seen Wikipedia's current events portal? [1] It's pretty much what you
describe there, sans critique (level 1, factual reporting).

In trying to escape the aggregators and filter bubbles, I have blocked all
news sources on my phone (including HN!) save for Wikipedia. Since the stories
are only high-priority and slowly evolving, I spend a lot less time on reading
news, and am happier for it.

[1]: (For convenience)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events)

~~~
etep
Wasn't aware of it, will try it - thank you!

------
jdreyfuss
I like the idea of "slow news." I imagine my ideal state would be a
combination of slow news and rapid fire updates. You get depth on the things
that deserve depth, as well as a shallow horizontal understanding of the most
current happenings across the board.

From the reader side, the challenge would come in making the time for the slow
news part when the rapid fire updates never stop, and in resisting the urge to
equate seeing the rapid fire updates with actually being informed on the
issues (i.e. "I don't need to read this in-depth look at the border situation;
I've already seen a bunch of small updates on that"). From the publisher side,
monetization is the ever-present issue

------
cleetus
These links discuss "news diets" as a counter to the problem of news as low-
quality information and/or information pollution:

[http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-
when...](http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when..).

[http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-
diet/](http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-diet/)

And here's a similar recent discussion on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099)

~~~
f055
Your dobelli link is 404 :( anyway, this whole problem isn’t new but it’s very
hard to solve. How to stay informed but not bloated? I don’t know... here they
compare mainstream news to fast food so I guess that’s one way to look at it:
[https://thecontext.net/opinion/2017/04/4/the-post-truth-
and-...](https://thecontext.net/opinion/2017/04/4/the-post-truth-and-the-
context.html)

~~~
gwern
[https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf)

------
rb808
The Lindy effect is a concept that Taleb talks a lot about. Basically the best
estimate of how long anything perishable will remain useful is how long its
been around already. ie the stuff that will remain useful in 10-50 years are
the ideas/texts/plays/ideas that have been around a long time already. Recent
news is likely worthless in an equally short time.

So best to learn from centuries or millennia old books, rather than looking at
twitter feed - or breaking news.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect)

------
TACIXAT
I would really like a big news service. These focuses might be a little
morbid, but like major catastrophes (e.g. Idai), a single pre election
explaining the stances, a post election on the results. Right now articles are
being written on one person saying something about an event of interest. You
can read 10 paragraphs a day on the Mueller report when nothing has really
progressed on that front. I would love something that just lets me know when
big stuff actually happens (e.g. wake me up when the report is out).

------
balasan
We are experience trust scarcity in online media because trust hasn't been
part of social media's business model. By extension it stopped being part of
the news publication's business model (everyone is forced to compete for
clicks). That and because on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

Ironically we are increasingly willing to get into stranger's cars and allow
strangers stay at our homes because a few corporations like Uber and Airbnb
were able to quantify, materialize and monetize trust. So it's not that much
of a stretch to imagine an internet where trust plays a role in the way we
distribute, consume and exchange information online. Hacker News is a case in
point.

Ready for the shill?

We're building Relevant to make it easy to set up communities similar to HN,
each with its own trust/reputation metric (based on personalized pagerank
algorithm). So instead of using clicks / votes, all users and content get a
trust/reputation score. The result is that rankings don't represent
popularity, but relevance, resulting in better feeds and making communities
easier to moderate. These trust metrics are much more resistant to sybil/sock-
puppet attacks and can be used to build healthier business models, from
prediction markets to advertising.

[https://relevant.community/relevant/top](https://relevant.community/relevant/top)

~~~
blackflame7000
I think the issue is too much trust. Too many people believe that because a
Network, Publication, Author, or Anchor published quality work in the past,
therefore, they can be trusted to reliably deliver news in the future.
People's sources, access, knowledge, agenda, and effort vary wildly and each
story needs to be judged on its own merit.

~~~
balasan
Right, so maybe scarcity of trustworthiness, or trust metrics/signals is more
accurate. Plenty of popularity/click metrics, but how often do we really want
to know what the masses think about complex nuanced topics?

------
stebann
This is a harsh truth everywhere. News are being killed, as the reality,
information and the data associated with it, all have been broken, categorized
and used to manipulate people so that they can not conceive another reality
and views. Many people is just looking through the lenses that paints better
their own egocentric conception of the world or just the cases they need to
rationalize what is happening on this confusing times. News regulation has
been labeled as "useless" or "censorship" too soon. The problem is the same
with other industries that have some mind-shaping power, people should have
some freedom to "control" the industry and the way the information flows
through their processes and from/to the society in general. This is not a
trivial problem and the fact that people is vulnerable to be manipulated and
their biases harnessed in some non-obvious way makes it more difficult. Also
we have the problem that we haven't been educated into metacognition,
structured and critical thinking. Education systems should prepared people for
information overload and into processes to derive the truth even when they
face an adverse and hostile environment.

------
musicale
Much of internet news seems to follow the TV news model: lurid "breaking
stories" interrupts and soundbites designed to capture your interest and trick
you into watching advertising and vapid commentary. The important information
is usually summarized quite adequately in a couple of headlines or sentences
the next day, and it's usually easy to dig up more information if you really
care.

------
WheelsAtLarge
News has been turned into an entertainment-sport where they make sure that
there are always two opposing sides. It's manipulated by a few into giving you
enough information to be outraged and inflamed but not informed. You can be on
the right or the left it does not matter. What matters for the news business
is that you get fed enough information so that you continue to watch and they
make a profit.

The heads of the news channels are ex-entertainment heads who make sure that
people continue to watch by feeding people more outrage.

The best thing people can do is stop reading and watching the news on a daily
basis. Most of the news that is reported is useless since there is no
substance to it and will disappear without any impact relatively fast. I
believe that if it's important you'll hear about it eventually.

"Slower better news" will never happen since it's not in the interest of the
news business to create it. We have to be the ones that need to stop consuming
it and figure out how to stay informed without being manipulated.

------
iancmceachern
I've been thinking about this for a while, even pitched the following:

Good news. News that makes the world better (aka journalism). Distilled
deductive logical reasoning, observations and theories. Not gossip, gawking,
envy, or mindless time sinks.

For me this pragmatically works out to a combination of hackernews, hackaday,
massdevice, arstechnica, atlasobscura, and podcasts/pbs/npr.

------
j-c-hewitt
I don't think it's that urgent because most people do not need to read most
news. For people with particular responsibilities, it can be helpful to be up-
to-date on the narrow field of news related to your responsibilities. For most
people, there may only be a 5-10 relevant news events per year. The fact that
you can access news from everywhere in the world instantaneously and at low
monetary cost does not make it inherently useful, and if anything, it's likely
to mislead you profoundly about your level of knowledge about the world and
the stories that you are reading.

Stories about plane crashes and mass earthquake deaths and things like that
are mostly about titillation and encouraging a morbid fascination with death.
It also discourages people from focusing on the things that they can control
in their life. The press doesn't like to admit it, but a lot of the 'hard
news' is just /r/watchpeopledie in a necktie.

------
jaabe
I subscribe to a paper that comes out each Friday, called weekendavisen. Until
May last year it didn’t have news on the web, they do have an electronic paper
now but I’ve never visited.

It’s high quality news in lengthy articles, in fact I’m not even in its
demographic because it has a lot of culture stuff as well and I don’t really
care about that.

I really like the fact that it’s relevant though. Because it only comes out on
Fridays, only the stuff that actually mattered during the week makes it in
there.

If something big happens I’ll turn to internet public service, but otherwise I
mostly ignore news outside of my weekly paper. I highly recommend it if you
want to stay informed but cut the bullshit and have a similar option.

------
kristianc
The FT works well for me.

I subscribe to both the FT and the Economist precisely because slow news is
what they do.

The FT tends to studiously avoid clickbait, avoid reporting every detail of
'this politician said that' and goes straight for the hard analysis of what it
means.

------
tareqak
Doesn’t slower, better news conflict with how news is primarily funded today
i.e. advertising? Tabloid news has existed much longer than I’ve been alive,
and their style (attention-grabbing, exaggerated titles) matches the kinds of
ads they display. A newspaper on a slower circulation cycle would need to
attract advertisers that market on similar cycle if the newspaper is dependent
on ad revenue (e.g. month-long offers).

A subscription-only / patron-only news service makes sense for the typical
customer of a Bloomberg terminal, but what about everyone else? Do they just
pay for headlines or three-sentence summaries?

You might say that most people don’t need that frequency of news, and for most
topics I would agree. However, there are topics like sports that create news
on such a frequent basis, and topics like politics where one could argue that
being accurately informed in a timely manner is a responsibility and a
necessity for a well-functioning democracy.

Tl;dr I don’t think you can separate the news from the manner in which it is
funded, and the issues in quality and business-viability that we’ve heard a
lot about is evidence for it.

------
hnuser355
I simply buy a weekly newspaper and read it. I’m always 1-1.5 weeks behind so
I never feel as “emotional” or follow things that closely. I want a general
feel for some of the things happening in the world and that is it

------
vermaden
I stopped checking 'general' news long ago.

Recently I searched for some 'valuable' news source - kinda meritum from the
news - but nothing like that exists ...

... so I started my own 'news' for UNIX/BSD/Linux related stuff - Valuable
News - [https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/valuable-
news-2019...](https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/valuable-
news-2019-04-08/)

Because various UNIX/BSD/Linux related news sites also make a lot of SPAM and
no-so-much-news ...

~~~
exitnode
Regular reader of Valuable News here. Thank you very much for your work and
efforts!

~~~
vermaden
Welcome :)

------
lefstathiou
Argh, it pains me that even professionals cannot get the word "peruse"
right...

"I skim e-mail newsletters in my in-box, scroll through my Twitter feed, and
peruse the news apps on my phone; later, in the office, I tap through my
notifications and monitor more than a dozen news-related apps, including
Facebook and Twitter, while juggling other tasks. I usually feel as though I’m
managing to stay abreast of the day’s biggest news stories, but my reading
tends to be fragmentary—I’m only skimming a story or absorbing a partial
update."

------
tvanantwerp
There are so many interesting, rich, deep topics to study that I just don't
have much interest in news anymore. It's so bite-sized, barely informative,
and usually of no practical or emotional value. A great deal of our desire to
"be informed" would be better served avoiding the news altogether, finding
substantial things to focus on.

------
peterlk
I have started reading the news differently in recent months. If the story
seems to incite outrage, I paint all actors in the story as acting in good
faith. This is obviously not true, but it helps break the cycle of feeling
like the world is going off the rails, and I think it is a good method for
figuring out what's actually going on.

------
SmellyGeekBoy
Maybe slightly off topic but the word "quest" implies (to me at least)
something long term and ongoing, and yet "urgent" seems to contradict this. If
anything, "urgent quest" seems like an oxymoron.

I guess in this day and age of instant gratification, even our quests need to
be urgent.

------
rhizome
It struck me today: are URLs the only kind of "viral" anybody considers to be
good? I'm not talking about dormant viruses or symbiotes or whatever, but
viruses in general seem to generally have been a problem for humans throughout
history (or at least since their discovery).

------
Razengan
As in most things today, this will only improve if there is more money to be
made by the improvement.

------
sterban
This was one of my goals in building
[https://statesreport.com](https://statesreport.com). It won't necessarily be
the first site to break news, but the goal is to provide better news based on
NLP + ML classification.

------
sonnyblarney
Hint: read American news from non-American sources, like BBC or better,
German/French sources if you can handle the translation.

Better yet: from Canada, i.e. the CBC.

Then you see it from the outside, where narrators have less skin in the game,
and it's all less click-baity.

------
anbop
Just read the news less often. Nobody really needs to know the news on a day
to day basis unless your personal safety is at risk. Just read a monthly
magazine like the Atlantic and learn the overall themes of what’s happening.

------
techbio
I want the best version, vetted and comprehensive, of all the news in the
previous week. If it's breaking news, I want to have a single point reference
of the current best information.

This requires editors, that's it.

------
jv22222
I think I'm going to try an experiment and switch my browsing/hn/news time to
listening to music instead.

I feel like I need to do _something_ in that downtime. Maybe music will calm
the soul.

See you guys in a few weeks!

------
a-saleh
I read weekly-magazines mostly and listen to podcasts. Locally, mostly
Respekt, a czech magazine, often cooperating with the Economist. It is decent.
I like it.

------
bookofjoe
"History is news that stays news."—Stewart Brand

------
TySchultz
I hear this same statement come up in conversation a lot more recently. A lot
of us agree that the news seems broken, though every time I have this
conversation we can never find a good solution to the problem.

I had tried making a simple app to fix the problem. Simple NLP to group
articles from different outlets. But I even find myself going back to the news
feed and not using my own project.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keda-
news/id1272869301?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/keda-
news/id1272869301?mt=8)

------
tombert
I remember when Jon Stewart said years ago that the 24-hour news cycle is
really designed for 9/11; for anything less than a catastrophic event like
that, they have to manufacture problems.

I think the worst offenders of this are Fox News, but it's not like CNN or
MSNBC are blameless. Spending days talking about the latest typo on in the
president's tweet ends up with a bizarre view of reality; even if you're not
watching Alex Jones or Sean Hannity, there's this bizarre, us-against-them,
almost-conspiratorial vibe to a lot of what's in the news.

BTW, I'm hardly better; I used to check Donald Trump's Twitter daily as well,
for almost two years.

~~~
stcredzero
_I think the worst offenders of this are Fox News, but it 's not like CNN or
MSNBC are blameless._

I remember being disgusted at Fox News, especially during the WMD debacle. I
was right there with Jon Stewart when he criticized it as "Faux News."
Certainly, "it's not like CNN or MSNBC are blameless." In recent years,
they've become every bit as bad.

 _there 's this bizarre, us-against-them, almost-conspiratorial vibe to a lot
of what's in the news_

Start counting the subtle references to these. It's pretty much everywhere
across mainstream news sources.

~~~
tombert
I still don't think CNN or MSNBC are as bad as Fox News yet. Sean Hannity is
basically Alex Jones-lite, and Tucker Carlson is pretty much completely
disingenuous (and if you want to talk about us-versus-them, I recommend
counting the number of times he says "elites" during his show). Plus, Fox and
Friends is pretty much just an elaborate propaganda program for the president
at this point.

Even if you agree with Trump's policies (I don't), I cannot see how anyone
could not see the blatent and purposeful right-wing propaganda of Fox.

~~~
tracker1
Try watching Tim Pool on youtube (timcast/subverse)... he's centrist/liberal
leaning but absolutely calls out a lot of the crap on all sides of the coin.

~~~
stcredzero
Google Caught Censoring Conservatives In New Leak

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CEyqDlKfLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CEyqDlKfLw)

------
billfruit
I feel that journalists haven't shown enough self criticism on serious issues
with how they operate like click-bait-ism, hyperbole-laden head line writing
and the Gell-Mann amnesia. On the face of such and other issues I see them
mostly on an defensive stance than that of any serious self introspection. It
is rare to see even acceptance of these and other problems from them, let
alone thought of any solutions.

They need to get off their ivory towers, and be transparent about their own
vulnerabilities.

------
_emacsomancer_
I'd prefer slower, better everything. Right now it seems that 'next quarter'
is long-term for most purposes.

------
TDettmering
Half of my browser window was ads and cookie warnings and x-articles-left
warnings. I just closed the window right away.

------
n00bdude
News that ain't fast is Yesterday's Paper

We need better sources w/ the usual HQ Hacker News Scouts

------
jammygit
This will be on the front page for 8-24 hours, then it will get replaced by
something newer

------
rkagerer
Every day I visit Google News and Hacker News. I get a lot more joy out of the
latter.

------
hyperpallium
This cannot happen, because of the defining characteristic of "news".

------
thoughtstheseus
A basic issue I find is the commentary. Give me facts and data, not
commentary.

------
ac130kz
Are those fonts a special journalist joke? They are 100% unreadable, I just
don't understand why a reputable newspaper/journal would use such font
selection.

~~~
hutattedonmyarm
Looks fine for me[0] The title has a weird font, but still legible

[0][https://i.imgur.com/0CkHdIP_d.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0CkHdIP_d.jpg)

------
fbn79
Scientific papers are the only news worth reading

------
lotusko
yes,A few years ago, I planned to implement a new consulting model that lagged
information.

------
skilled
What news? When was the last time any major outlet reported a news story that
originated from the heart and not the overbloated ego? Not to mention, when
was the last time someone reported a news story without using terms like
"left" or "right" or "socialist".

As someone who does not give a single ounce of care for the political circus
that people are enslaved by, do you realise how dumb it all looks from
sidelines?

Yeah, pretty dumb.

------
AFascistWorld
Article spinner.

------
m0zg
New Yorker should thoroughly retract the discredited "very fine people" hoax
before suggesting that we need "better news". Apologizing to Trump and to
their readers would be a responsible thing to do as well.

[https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&ei=jo-uXIS-
Npj9-gT...](https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&ei=jo-uXIS-
Npj9-gTi_LzoDQ&q=new+yorker+trump+%22fine+people%22&oq=new+yorker+trump+%22fine+people%22)

------
notacoward
Reading the print version of a newspaper isn't going to help, because they're
just as guilty as anyone of putting up repetitions and very minor updates of
the same few stories instead of actual, y'know, _new_ things that have
happened. Just look at what's on the NYT front page _right now_.

* "The Border Is Broken. And There's No Plan To Fix it." Yawn. This has been in heavy rotation for _weeks_. Also, poor grammar.

* "Black Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever" Super cool, but after the first thirty stories I saw about this I'd like to hear about some other scientific advance.

* "William Barr Testimony Highlights: Attorney General Says He Thinks ‘Spying Did Occur’ on Trump Campaign Video" Also on heavy rotation for days now.

* "Israel Election Live Updates: As Gantz Concedes, Netanyahu Set for Victory" OK, one out of four so far.

You get the idea. Google News is even worse.

* Trump urges inquiry into 'attempted coup' against him

* Israel Election: Netanyahu Appears Headed For Win In Close Race

* IRS commissioner "working on letter" in response to request for Trump tax returns

* Police investigating death of 20-year-old college student who collapsed at Hilton Head Island off-campus party

* The E.U. Seems Ready to Put Brexit on Ice. But for How Long?

* How Stephen Miller tightened his grip over Trump's immigration and border policy

Those are almost all retreads, again excepting the Israel election. Some are
damn near duplicates of _each other_. It's as though even the most "modern"
news sources are still stuck on one new headline per day. Every morning when I
check in, there's 90% overlap with the previous day.

We're not being overwhelmed with news; we're being overwhelmed with olds. My
own urgent quest is not for news that's slower or better according to some
arbitrary notion of quality. I'll judge that for myself. All I ask is for news
that's _news_.

~~~
openasocket
> "The Border Is Broken. And There's No Plan To Fix it." Yawn. This has been
> in heavy rotation for weeks. Also, poor grammar.

That's a long form article about a variety of issues with the immigration
system, from immigration courts to how migrants are detained. It's very
informative. I read a lot on the subject and I found more than a few facts in
here that I wasn't aware of.

> "William Barr Testimony Highlights: Attorney General Says He Thinks ‘Spying
> Did Occur’ on Trump Campaign Video" Also on heavy rotation for days now.

How has that been reported "for days now"? That quote is literally from his
testimony earlier today.

> "Black Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever" Super cool, but after the
> first thirty stories I saw about this I'd like to hear about some other
> scientific advance.

But it's not like the NYT has 30 stories about this, the fact that we have a
lot of different news sources isn't a bad thing. Though you do have a point
about a lack of scientific reporting

~~~
notacoward
> That quote is literally from his testimony earlier today.

So if he repeats the same claim every day, NYT should displace something else
to report on every instance?

No.

~~~
openasocket
William Barr has never made that claim. And he went on to say, right after
that quote, that the Justice Department is conducting an investigation into
this. That's very big news! Trump tweeting about how Obama spied on him is
very different than the Justice Department dedicating resources to
investigating the FBI, Obama, and Hillary Clinton.

~~~
notacoward
Let's say for the sake of argument that it qualifies as news. Does it change
the overall argument that "news" outlets try to claim far too much of our
attention for topics they've already saturated, in the process _failing_ to
bring new events to our attention? Or are we just sealioning here?

~~~
openasocket
I think it depends. If you use NYT or WaPo or WSJ as your primary news source
I don't believe you'll see duplicates (if you only pick one of those 3,
obviously each of those papers will publish their own version of the same
story), excluding editorials. To a lesser extent this is true with the CNN
news site, if you exclude their opinion pieces and "Analysis" articles (which
tend to just link to their actual news article and add the potential political
ramifications. Not true journalism, but not really an editorial either).
Though the same can not be said of the actual CNN TV channel, which I find
nearly unwatchable because they rehash essentially the same information over
and over. I can't comment much about other sources.

As for failing to bring new events to our attention, I totally agree. The 4
outlets I mentioned above don't give enough attention to international news,
stuff that really is important. Even in domains that are heavily covered bits
get left behind. Like a Trump-appointed federal judge for the Federal Court of
Appeals who had never been a judge of any kind before (The BAR recommends at
least 12 years of judge experience for that position, the nominee didn't even
have their law degree for 12 years) and was an active member of a SPLC-
recognized hate group (who was confirmed by the Senate, btw). I don't have a
single news article about that one, which is an absolute shame.

I'm just not entirely sure what stories should be cut. Maybe it will come down
to just having a better aggregation system and UI to discover and keep track
of these stories.

------
stcredzero
[https://quillette.com/](https://quillette.com/)

~~~
52-6F-62
Quillette has proven to be of consistent poor quality, IMO. (and further, I've
found it dishonest)

Please note that it's founding and leadership team includes alumni of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Media).

That latter outfit is not known for it's...veracity.

~~~
stcredzero
_Quillette has proven to be of consistent poor quality, IMO. (and further, I
've found it dishonest)_

I've found them willing to take unpopular positions for the sake of truth.
What have they done which is dishonest?

[https://quillette.com/2019/04/08/what-explains-the-
resistanc...](https://quillette.com/2019/04/08/what-explains-the-resistance-
to-evolutionary-psychology/)

