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Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#211
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that twitter is anything like the sociopolitical dynamics of pre-1500 is just as ludicrous as your other statements. You're acting like hiding in a hole and ignoring the issues around you is the right thing to do.. and trying to sell it like you've discovered this new and better way to live.

I disagree. I've written a little about this: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/are-we-still-thinking-795bd... In pre-modern times one talked to more people, sometimes in a single day, than one would ever read in one's lifetime. Today it's the opposite: we will always read/see/hear from more sources that we cannot converse with than we will ever speak to. Twitter allows you great opportunity for dialogue again. It's t…

The rebuttal here isn’t that declining to read news is hiding in a hole, it’s that getting your world-view updates (“news”) by following individuals on Twitter is worse.

For instance, it’s been argued that the “low-information” Twitter bubble is partly culpable for Hillary’s loss.

Having read your assertions here and your link, it seems your premise is based on a misunderstanding of historical and modern sociology of both conversation and information propagation.

You’re focusing on mass media as though it replaced conversation. It’s not at all clear that it did.

People still converse verbally as much as they used to, but with today’s mobility patterns the interlocutors they encounter in person both among acquaintances and at random today are more diverse than those they rubbed shoulders with 500 years ago. And each of those can converse with a more diverse group in turn.

By sifting through and following a subset of Twitter, you’re (however unintentionally) narrowing your aperture, and you tend to end up consuming bon mots like bonbons rather than engaging in deeper dialog opportunistically or spontaneously.

Before Twitter, its mode of communication was called micro-casting:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/microcasting-definition-exa...

You’ve drawn a line between TV or radio and Twitter as though it’s conversational, but once you account for the ratio of pub to sub, from followed to followers, you see it’s not the same mode as conversation. On the contrary, you’ve just self-selected your own personalized micro-channel, and are recommending others do the same to the exclusion of thoughtfully curated information from a long evolving school of journalistic practice.

At the same time, despite Netflix, Twitter, or Facebook, the art of serious and coherent conversation endures, ideally informed by both individual interests and shared news of significance:

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2006/12/19/chatteri...

From the town crier to the newsprint to today’s subscriptions to Reuters, ProPublica, economist, guardian, wapo, nyt, etc. (see link for independent sources), curated and contextualized news has informed local conversation, national debate, and societal outcomes.

https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/A-Real-Need-for-the-Real...

That value is being challenged by advertising driven content mills, which degrades the quality of news, but selecting vetted journalistic sources is not particularly different from selecting which Twitter quipsters to follow.

Some sources are tilting at the ad supported windmill, trying to find alternative economic models for journalism:

https://blog.joincivil.com/the-value-of-journalism-1c0e6905f...

To quote from that link, “... at the end of the day, we live in the real world. It’s what makes journalism so essential and durable: a free society’s demand to know what’s happening will never cease.“

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#212

reuters.com - The UI (especially mobile) is pretty terrible so it's hard to get hooked - It generally only reports global news that means something rather than talking heads or identity politics - They have published some articles critical of themselves or affiliates, which in my opinion demonstrates objectivity Also when I'm commuting to work, I'll listen to the local NPR station on the radio which covers some local…

I like Reuters because it seems to be one of the more neutral news sources in the US.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#213
post #68

The problem is that online news sources are (almost) all the same - low budget, second tier silos of mostly trainee journalists. They have an emphasis on clicks and outrage and constant updates to keep you engaged and are a secondary (or tertiary) driver of revenue. The only exception I know of are The New York Times and maybe The Intercept. My tip is to read a (or more) actual (read: printed) newspapers: - they are…

There’s a reason it seems online sources are the same. Step outside the conglomerates, and choose independent news.

See the following list for a “growing number of independent news sources available to anyone with internet access. The following are only a sampling of those alternatives. Most state that they are “non-partisan, independent and non-profit.” Some are more transparent than others; a couple even outline a code of journalistic ethics their company follows.”

https://soapboxie.com/social-issues/A-Real-Need-for-the-Real...

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reason is libertarian, not conservative.

Tangent, but I wish we'd come up with better labels for our viewpoints in the US than "conservative" or "liberal". It's been on my mind a lot lately. "The Once and Future Liberalism" explores this idea in depth: https://www.the-american-interest.com/2012/01/24/the-once-an... "Liberal" is maybe the most overloaded word in politics. "classical liberalism", "economic liberalism", "liberal democracy", what the American r…

I feel sure it's going to happen in the next several decades. More and more people on the left are not liberals or are even anti-liberals. The right is currently dominated by a wing that's not traditional-conservative. Arguably that's been the case at least since Reagan, actually - the word "conservative" has dramatically shifted in meaning over the last 75 years.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about Wall Street Journal?

Great news content. Very rupert-murdoch-driven editorial bias

I've been reading WSJ for a long time because of their news reporting (I'm vaguely left wing on the American left-right spectrum). Recently however I've been pretty shocked to see them taking a right wing party line in some major stories, including this one about recent events in Bolivia (widely denounced as a coup by those on the left): https://www.wsj.com/articles/bolivias-accidental-leader-trie...

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#218

Quit news. Quit politics. Don't have a "media diet." Make stuff and try to be around people who make stuff instead. To lay a single cobblestone path is to have more virtue than a million hot takes. Most causes are not thought-out enough to advocate, certainly not to scream about. The cobblestone path may outlive you. Politics and news, for all of their rage and sense of urgency, turn with the leaves. If you want to d…

You had me up until Twitter.

Twitter is the nonstop first date where everybody is working hard to look like somebody who is "in the know" and has their life together. Yes, there are "real people" there but they are few compared to the a sea of bots, narcissists and PR-talk.

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#219
post #166

My list for mostly political and non-corporate media. https://theintercept.com/ https://jacobinmag.com/ https://www.currentaffairs.org/

Genuine question from someone who probably (given your choices) agrees with you politically most of the time: do any of these strike you as acceptable news (i.e. non-editorial) sources? If so, why?

Re: Ask HN: What are your news sources other than HN?

#220

Caspian Report on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CaspianReport Condensed news which are more like essays, 15-20mins for each topic, they set the historical context for the current events in a very objective way.

I like some of the channel's older content. The newer stuff is a bit opinionated for my taste.
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