I strongly agree with this. I would, however, like to call out one TV program here in the U.S. that I think comes much closer to approximating the experience of “reading a 5,000-word article”: PBS NewsHour. It’s great, completely free and available to watch online, and you can even get most of what you need from their podcast alone ( https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/segments ). It consists of fairly in…
I hardly watch TV, but happened across News Hour at someone's home. I was shocked; it was a like an alternate reality. It makes CNN and Fox look ridiculous - everyone should watch News Hour just to reset their perspectives.
I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news. Google News has gotten increasingly annoying though, forcing me harder toward the "personalized" results, the kind of filter bubble I'm intentionally trying to avoid. What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. They definitely have a bias (particularly in their editorials), but it's mostly of the "free trade" variety, w…
> I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news When it comes to news, I'm of the opinion that one should strive for diversity of opinion rather than quality. As you noted, all media has a bias so you should see what everyone's biases are. You will never get truth from any single media outfit so cast a wide net. > What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. Why woul…
Print ads are a lot less obtrusive for me compared to digital ads. It's literally just a piece of paper that I don't have to look at. They don't have inline ads, or sponsored content, or autoplaying videos, or any of the conventional web shenanigans that try to hijack your attention. They certainly can't track me. I can't speak to the digital side of the economist, as I do not use it, but the print ads are mostly for dumb luxury goods that I can easily ignore.
People paid for newspapers for decades, and they've definitely always had ads in them. The advertisers subsidize my news reading, and in this case at least the trade-off seems acceptable.
My suggestion is don't even bother with the economist. It's news in more pretentious and intelligent packaging. It's honestly better than some other sources for sure, but that isn't the point. The point isn't to find good sources of news. I think the point is that most news, no matter how good it is, is largely pointless. I'll pick up the economist if something in it interests me. Otherwise I largely ignore all news.
The Economist is also like 100+ pages per week. Very hard to consume without significant dedication.
I fully agree with this. Scanning Google News or a couple of the more professional international news services like BBC / Al Jazeera / Reuters I still feel pretty well informed (and confident that there's usually nothing of immediate consequence to me) but it doesn't grow into "expert analysis" or impact my feelings much. Here's another thing I noticed: how manipulated / manipulative it is. And not just news and I do…
I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news. Google News has gotten increasingly annoying though, forcing me harder toward the "personalized" results, the kind of filter bubble I'm intentionally trying to avoid. What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. They definitely have a bias (particularly in their editorials), but it's mostly of the "free trade" variety, w…
Spoiler: He did not actually quit the news, just watching news on TV as opposed to reading articles. > I’m mostly talking about following TV and internet newscasts here. This post isn’t an indictment of journalism as a whole. There’s a big difference between watching a half hour of CNN’s refugee crisis coverage (not that they cover it anymore) versus spending that time reading a 5,000-word article on the same topic.
Yeah enormous difference. It is indeed a good idea to avoid TV news. My suggestion: Go to a news stand instead and grab a copy of The Economist. One who does that will learn much about the world. About countries one rarely hear about in other media outlets. About advances in science and technology. In my opinion, time spent reading The Economist is not wasted. Well that’s my 2¢ anyway ¯\＿(ツ)＿/¯
I'd advise against the news stand. Classic intelligence fieldwork ploy: if you make someone work a little for a bit of information, they're more likely to assign it a higher value.
Adding friction to your news consumption makes it feel higher quality, but is of course actually totally independent of that.
I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news. Google News has gotten increasingly annoying though, forcing me harder toward the "personalized" results, the kind of filter bubble I'm intentionally trying to avoid. What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. They definitely have a bias (particularly in their editorials), but it's mostly of the "free trade" variety, w…
After one year of subscribing to the Economist I like it, but would prefer if it was a monthly newspaper with 1/4 of the content. Reading it throughout each week takes quite a lot of my reading time and I have a feeling that dedicating this time to books would be better. Monthly with well selected topics would be enough to stay informed of important current issues.
This is a question for the folks who have been reading the Economist regularly for a while. What do you guys feel like you get out of reading the Economist over time? This is meant as a genuine question. So for example, I consume my news only via my Google News feed, so basically just a fast scan of the headlines and maybe a few news articles in depth. Does the Economist provide more details, more nuance, more depth? Do you guys feel it helps paint the bigger picture better then "regular" news media, a more erudite perspective?
Specifically about covid - I think everyone knows that nothing is perfect. Arguing that other people think either vaccines or masks are perfect is a classic strawman argument. [1] Vaccines are less-bad than a Covid infection, training your immune system without actually exposing it to the dangers of Covid-19 itself. Masks reduce viral loads - mostly through reducing shedding and partially through reducing intake. Ass…
I can't post on his comment as it's been flagged. Sorry to hijack your comment.
I can relate where you are coming from. Protecting your livelihood, providing for your family, that would get me so friggen worked up, and I can't even imagine the stress, I just can't even begin to. The worst part about prison is the failing your family aspect, so I can imagine how frusting, trapped feeling anything like that and it being outside of your control, through no fault of your own. And seeing that humanizes that this isn't just financial numbers, those financial numbers represent people that are deeply suffering from the lockdowns, those financial numbers represent a human cost. For me, I listened to my mother on the phone worry as she spent her last days in fear because she was dying of cancer and chemo killed her immune system and she was in a no mask state. So it's understandable I might be pretty protective of her and her fears. Or my daughter that has an immune condition and might never be able to live normally now that COVID is a thing. I as a son, a father, hold on to some little sliver wanting to protect my mother, praying my daughter doesn't have to become some bubble girl. Wanting people to wear masks might be irrational, but it isn't out of maliciousness or wanting to hurt, but out of a sense of powerlessness to protect those I love. It's even harder because I am a libertarian who doesn't think the mandates provide enough benefit for the costs nor should they be mandates on a logical level, but hearing the fear in my mom's voice, multiplied by so many people, I just don't know. Their fear has a consideration aspect too. This is the sort of humanizing of others experiences that I think we need and I just don't see anywhere else on the internet right now.
I agree but the danger of this is being too dismissive of actual threats. I don't know how to draw that line.
Fair! Imho, there's two classes of actual threats. (1) A sudden, well-prepared realignment of the status quo, enforced afterwards on an ongoing basis. (2) The slow realignment of expectations (aka boiling the frog slowly). It seems like people often see (2), when in reality few groups are farsighted and patient enough to successfully carry that off. In reality what they're seeing is the normal sausage-making of a dem…
I don't know why you think (2) relies on groups being farsighted and patient. The frog boiling that happens today is almost always a result of chaotic incentivization. Politics is very different today than maybe 20 years ago. No conspiracy needed for that. Yet these unintentional or perhaps even well-intentioned changes to the status quo can be worth observing and reasoning about.
A single district mandating critical race theory education won't by itself change a lot, but it's part of a broader shift in the zeitgeist's heresies. Does there need to be a shadowy cabal of progressives saying "yes, just as planned" for this to be true and noteworthy? The things you can't say today are different from the things you couldn't say 20 years ago. You don't need to breathlessly follow the news to know this, but you would be a fool to ignore it entirely. Regardless of whether you think these heresies are morally/politically good, every citizen needs to keep up to date on the latest heresies lest they run afoul of those heresies themselves.
Noting that slow shifts in the status quo are rare is rather unhelpful. Of course they're rare. But being familiar with the forest will help you find the right tree. The idea that the truth is a needle in the haystack is just as easily a prescription for consuming more news, not less.
That's not to say that you should. Perhaps your life is such that you've decided you don't need any of this or you don't need to find the true danger in every corner. Even dedicated experts find it hard to find true danger before it arrives knocking at the door. The value of finding true danger before it arrives is also debatable. Vast knowledge and the effort needed to acquire it is not an unalloyed good, it's a cost/benefit trade-off like everything else in life.
I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity when it comes to news. Google News has gotten increasingly annoying though, forcing me harder toward the "personalized" results, the kind of filter bubble I'm intentionally trying to avoid. What worked well for me was getting a print subscription to the Economist. They definitely have a bias (particularly in their editorials), but it's mostly of the "free trade" variety, w…
My personal favorite recommendation in this vein is The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/ . They've got some great writers and editors and often deliver pretty unique insights. Their articles tend towards long-ish-form, but not nearly as long as e.g. the New Yorker. They're a little less world-focused and more US-centric, but not completely. There is some bias (isn't there always?), but I've seen them cover a si…
Atlantic truly is all over the map. They'll have articles like the watershed Coddling of the American Mind from 2015, but then shortly after it's nothing but Trump 24/7 like every other outlet.