I suggest monitoring Arts and Letters Daily http://aldaily.com to get the best bang for your buck (where the currency you're spending here is time). Every day the site lists three of the best articles covering subjects of import from anywhere on the web. Often the articles have a theme, and cover an issue from multiple angles.
At first I thought you were asking pg to add a page to http://news.ycombinator.com/lists that listed the sources/domains of submissions sorted by most-submitted. That would be interesting.
programming.reddit, science.reddit, news.yc (though lately I've resorted to upvoting stories that are actually "Hacker News"...)
Slashdot has gotten surprisingly good again in recent years (most of the dregs have gone to other sites), and the snarky tags (that users inevitably add) instantly indicate when an editor messes up or gives a crappy summary.
The Economist, All Things Considered & Marketplace (National Public Radio programs in the US).
I regularly read the NYTimes opinion pages and occasionally more of the NYTimes for background if I find I'm missing it.
I listen to the New Yorker (Audible.com offers it as a for-pay podcast).
I Tivo the McLaughlin group every week and occasionally even watch it when I have a hankering for talking heads.
I used to read the NYTimes religiously, but I've become convinced that the idea of regular news consumption in non-varying amounts is poison b/c of the way it elevates the importance of trivial events that happen on slow news days (see any local TV newscast in the US for the extreme version of this).
I think the Economist is somewhat immune to this effect because of its international focus. NPR survives this effect pretty well because it has enough arts/humanities-oriented material to round out slow news days.
I take a look at cnn.com, corriere.it, ilsole24.com to keep up with world news. This site, programming.reddit.com for computer stuff, with a quick glance at lwn.net and slashdot. The Economist to have something to read for... those moments when the laptop wouldn't be easy to drag along.
If I were in Italy or the US, I think I would consider a local paper, to read about local goings on. If I subscribed to a more international paper, I think I'd go for the Financial Times.
The Economist (the absurd price for the print edition is, alas, worth it), Hacker News, Google News and Yahoo News.
I sometimes check reddit when the Hacker News anti-procrastination feature locks me out. :-)
N.B. There have been some recent claims here at news.YC that The Economist has been going downhill recently. This may be true, but I've been reading it for the better part of a decade and haven't noticed any decline in quality.
I'm surprised more people don't listen to NPR. NPR is my main news source I compliment that with the economist, news.yc, and reddit, though less so lately. Frontline from pbs whenever they have a new one out.
Podcasts:
Highlights from PBS: The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
on the media
apm: marketplace
NPR: it's all politics
talk of the nation science friday
NPR: you can't beat radio for multitasking.
CSPAN: I like my political news relatively unfiltered.
Hacker News: this is anthropormorphic. if not true, this comment wouldn't exist.
Slashdot: consistent quality. the response of /. on 9/11 made a lasting impression on me.
Google News: general overview.
I've been trying to stay away from TC as well. Their stories are well written, but it's a heavily biased source as many of their editors are invested in the companies they promote.
Slashdot,
BBC,
Gizmodo,
New Scientist,
Bilogy News Net,
Eureka Alert,
YC News (of course),
TechCrunch (US and UK),
Techgain,
How To Change The World,
VentureBeat,
Get Venture,
FoundRead.
haha - news.ycombinator.com
Seriously, i've never submitted anything. I've been tempted to link to a few things from boingboing and mind hacks but never actually done so.
These are most of those I follow... as you'll see, it's very difficult to find good material on maths and physics blogs, or at least I've had difficulties on finding it.
