How do you process the news?

I think it could. But it must be funded by readers and not accept outrageous donations by elite people. This is as to not create a potential dependency.

In reality, though, people will never pay for news (and will rarely even pay for magazines) and they need their dopamine hit.

To truly be unbiased, I believe that it must also be "slow journalism".

Social media, but yes even mainstream media, or just living as a farmer or ranch-hand, can turn some of us into unhinged feral animals. I'm a victim.

During my last round of college we learned "The CRAAP Test" for evaluating sources. My father applies it instinctively. If only we could internalize this.

Lately I'm at a point where there's a sameness and familiarity to all the news from everywhere. And if I notice the recurrent themes, I begin to ponder why it's recurring, what context/sources/seasons, and not the facts or emotional content themselves, but "why do these sources want me to know about this sort of thing?"

For example, ever since COVID-19, or even 9/11, or 1903, the news cycle has run air disasters and played-up in-flight incidents, and I'm thinking, are they trying to discourage the hoi polloi from flying? Indeed, travelers beware; are they trying to scare us into compliance? Just cranking up fear, uncertainty and doubt across the board?

Also lately, I've shifted my news sources (because all mainstream media is really behind thousands of paywalls) and I hearken directly to gov't or organizational sources, where they make good PR and favorable press releases and they hold conferences to tell us how good they're doing. Now hopefully we can also see through that, but at least it feels like good news in these hard times. [Except it's never my good news, it's someone else's Good News...]

All the "good information" is paywalled. You won't get something for nothing. You can get some ad-supported stuff or you can pay for better stuff, or you can content yourself with horrific free crap. The Social Media newsies are just baiting you for subscriptions and website visits.

Make a monthly budget for your infotainment. Pay for what's important to you. Admit that you're in the proletariat and you're not entitled to be "in the know" beyond your pay-grade. Curiosity killed the cat; "knowledge is power", but you won't gain knowledge--and you could lose WIS points-- by consuming news.

Curated/personalized media can manipulate or influence in amazing ways, but I guess so can family/church/neighbor/community via meatspace. Perhaps they're more similar than we think.

Being "in a bubble[s]" is a crazy thing to consider: none of my neighbors or people at church have similar experiences of watching films, music, industry/employment experience, hearing specific news or whatever. Floating through the online bubbles and then popping them to enter meatspace is an enormous leap of faith. The context-switches I do every day, taking a lot of concentration and preparation.

A worker at church began greeting me with "What do you know?" and there's no answer to that... just silence... I think he likes it that way

-- the most important pieces of news may be hidden in thousands of instances of noise;

-- you have to have the ability to identify the best commentators, in order to follow them (and the search is continuous also because even the topmost are not perfect).

Prior to 2001, i watched maybe 15 minutes of news a day, like while making lunch, or just KNX 1070 in the car. September 11th, i began watching 2+ screens of news, recording it, analyzing it. This went on until at least 2002.

Something "snapped" and i got rid of my TV. a few years later, i still had no TV, no cable, etc. I just didn't "watch" news. Professor Naji Dahi said i was the first person in his class to ever answer "0 TVs" when he polled the class about how many screens were in their house, around 2004-2005.

I still don't have a "TV". And 50% of my news is "social media", and the other 50% of "real news" comes from a news analysis podcast that i won't evangelize. I've linked to archival news clips hosted by the showrunners, here, though. THe podcast is ~5 hours a week, and i spend about 5 hours actually researching and analyzing news i see on social media, usually so i have an understanding if someone mentions the news story later in the week (or whatever).

The news stresses me out. It makes me angry - but approaching it from an analysis standpoint makes it less so. It makes it funny in a "tragedy" sort of way.

Just as an example, i look outside every day and it's the exact same. regardless of what the news says is going on. This might not hold true for everyone.

I don't have some deep philosophical wisdom to share, here. No matter what you ingest and process, if you talk about it in public, someone will disagree with you.