good news

[cjsmith]

Advice solicited. What are your news sources?

One of the things World Without Mind successfully convinced me is that if individual consumers want good, reliable, thoughtful, accurate written content, we're going to have to be willing to pony up.

I want journalism that is not recycled clickbait with outrage-inducing tweaks to the headlines. I want news articles with some investigation and fact checking behind them. I want editorials with depth and with critical thinking. I cannot expect to get the news content I want via the gateways of Google or Facebook. The market forces actively, strongly, and diametrically oppose it.

(I also want nonfiction books that are well-researched and professionally edited. I need to consider whether I can get those via the gateway of Amazon. So far, I can, if I'm choosy.)

So. I'm looking for good news sources, web OK but they need to be places I can go directly - and I'm willing to pay to subscribe.

How do you evaluate your news sources? Do you research where their money comes from? Do you base it on what you've read by them? Do you base it on what you’ve read about them? Do you do something else I haven't thought of? What are your favorites, and why?

(This is a public entry. Access-limited entry here for folks who don't want to comment on public entries.)

Comments

[wcg]

I subscribe to the Washington Post because it's my local paper. It's also reasonably good. The Baltimore Sun used to be good but is now a pale shadow of its former self. I also subscribe to the NY Times because it's a way to support The Daily, a podcast I listen to every morning. It also has Rukmini Callimachi and David Sanger on staff, and I like to think I'm doing my bit to keep them both employed and doing the good work they do.

Free online news sources I aggregate via the Feedly rss aggregator. These include
Christian Science Monitor (really, it's a great source of unbiased news and you can just ignore the occasional religious piece)
Columbia Journalism Review -- for news about the news
Five Thirty Eight -- for their daily Significant Digits summary

I used to get the Reuters and AP feeds, but concluded that I wasn't seeing anything in them that I hadn't already seen in either the Post or the Times. That said, they're good as a list of headlines to scan just to see what your local paper decided not to print.

The Google news feed is decent once you've tweaked it. If I'm traveling it's a great way to see news at a glance.

For more in-depth stuff, take a look at Medium.com. Lots of high quality articles there for a pretty reasonable monthly fee. I also like Lawfare.com for its coverage of legal and foreign policy matters. The site is free and you can support it by purchasing swag from their online shop. They're good people doing good work.

For weather news I use the Weatherunderground.com. It's owned by the Weather Channel now, but it's still better in my opinion. Whatever you do, avoid AccuWeather. They're charlatans.

[redbird]

I like Weather Underground in part because their mission explicitly includes reporting on climate change. The network of very local weather stations is also useful.

[cjsmith]

Thank you! I think I'm going to go ahead with Washington Post. How do you decide who's "good"? I need to learn to be a better consumer. Your mention of Columbia Journalism Review may be a partial answer to this question. :)

Thanks for the big list of places to check out!

[wcg]

Yeah, CJR is pretty good at identifying what's good, as well as taking people to task for their errors.

Other than that, there's a thing called The Media Bias Chart which is pretty good when it comes to identifying where various sources fall in the spectrum of reliability and political bent. You can find it all over the net. I think the most recent version is 5.0. link

For radio stations, NPR is as good as you'll find nationwide. I don't know your local stations so I can't comment on them. If you want my list of podcasts I'll happily share those too. Not sure if you have time to listen to those. I listen to several hours worth of them every day while walking the dog. (Or she's walking me.)

[cjsmith]

Thanks! And yeah, I had found the Media Bias Chart too. Handy.

I think you actually did give me a (partial?) list of podcasts once. Currently I use my commute as a sort of mental quiet time, and there's value in that, but perhaps news / podcasts are worth cutting into that mental time. :)

[amaebi]

FWIW , when President Trump was elected I switched to NPR in the car from Pimsleur in the car.

[cjsmith]

Aw man, I was just switching to Pimsleur in the car from contemplative alone-time mental-recharging in the car. :)