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

[cjsmith]

It's not only _from_ Google or Facebook but ultimately _via_ Google or Facebook that I'm realizing won't work for me. (Not that I'm getting a blessed thing via FB in any case.)

Ah, thank you, I hadn't thought about NPR! Durrr.

Would you recommend subscribing to NYT, WSJ, WaPo, Guardian? (I think I'm going to go ahead and buy a subscription to The Guardian anyhow.)

I too have heard good things about Teen Vogue. That does seem odd, but I'd be all kinds of foolish to judge it based solely on my preconceived idea of what something called Teen Vogue "should" be. :) :)

[hitchhiker]

teen vogue has redefined itself over the last few years, and it's truly amazing. (which reminds me, i should subscribe just to support them!)

i currently subscribe to the guardian, because i love their policy of "we use subscription money to support free access for everyone", and to the washington post because they were doing some very good journalism in the early trump days. i do not subscribe to the nyt because i dislike their policy of giving climate change deniers and both-sides-are-just-as-bad pundits a platform, but they do do good journalism if you discount the op-ed columns.

[cjsmith]

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead with Guardian. How did you evaluate "very good journalism" by WaPo and "good journalism [edit: except the op-ed]" by NYT [edit: and "amazing" for Teen Vogue]? [edit: I need to learn to be a savvier consumer.]

I have insufficient hatred for the both sides people, I suspect. (No, I don't consider the two main US political parties equivalent by any means, but each does have some significant suckage, and I personally am unwilling to ignore that or paper over it even for my preferred folk. If that means I run across a just-as-bad essay from time to time, that's a cost that I find acceptable in order to not live in a bubble.)

[hitchhiker]

i mostly evaluate it by the topics they cover, and how much i feel engaged when reading them; nothing particularly savvy i'm afraid. for instance teen vogue has started focusing on pressing social and political issues over the last few years, washington post has done a series of "this is what the people in power are doing, and here's why it's not right/normal", nyt has had a lot of good in-depth coverage of various segments of the country and how they are living in these times, not to mention some excellent coverage of medical advances, and the guardian has been good about writing about systemic social and environmental issues.

[cjsmith]

Thanks! Those are concrete things I can look at. I wish the Media Bias Chart had evaluated Teen Vogue...

Even I have noticed the NYT's coverage of medical stuff, which is impressive considering how much I've had my head in the sand lately.