News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

I've found that if anything is truly important, I'll hear about through non-news channels (friends, family, cow-orkers, personal blogs, etc.). It works remarkably well.

The stuff I read in the morning is very different from the stuff I read through the day. The morning is all about news - where I am playing catch up to what the world's editors think is important for me. I hardly look back at yesterdays news. In contrast, what I read through the day is largely intent/search driven, suggested by a friend or colleague, discovered through email etc. This content typically has longer shelf life, and is more valuable to me.

This is why I think, what I read as "News" should be largely driven by what I'm doing throughout the day. I'm working on Pugmarks.me [1] with this exact premise. Here are some design principles we're using:

1. What I read should be greatly influenced by my professional interests, as opposed to what is popular 2. My colleagues often have an overlap with my interests, and their experiences should help me discover great content 3. If have a set of sources that I trust, and this is continually evolving. A system should attempt to help me discover content from these sources (and potential new sources) before reaching out to the larger web 4. When I discover great content, I should be able to hold on to it, and rediscover it when I'm in a similar context again in the future

With these principles in action at Pugmarks.me, I've been able to significantly improve the quality of my reading.

[1]: http://pugmarks.me

A few other points: not everything we do ought to be subject to the criteria he laid out. Any hobby could be said to be a waste of your time or insignificant to your "real" life.

I also agree that while the news may be designed to make readers emotional and cause them to miss details or make cognitive errors, whether or not those negative effects happen depends on the reader. I find reading the news to be an excellent exercise in figuring out which facts are really important in a story, especially when those facts are missing from whatever article you happen to be reading. One of my favorite things to do after reading an obviously lacking article is to ask myself "What fact or number could the author have presented to conclusively prove his point?" And then try to find that fact or number.

As superficial as the news tends to be, it can still function as an entry point into a new subject. A sufficiently bad article on a sufficiently interesting subject will prompt me to seek out some additional information on my own. For example, silly rants about educational quality led me to read up on the ways that teacher performance is calculated. Lackluster articles about the visual changes in Windows 8 made me seek out articles on theories of computer UI design.

Lastly, I will argue that some news consumption is in fact the imperative of good citizens in a democracy. Without some background on current events, a citizen can't make informed decisions in elections, or in their other civic activities. While following every gaffe is obviously not necessary, a critical review of politician's claims requires that people understand what problems the politicians will be solving.

"It is in literature as in life: wherever you turn, you stumble at once upon the incorrigible mob of humanity, swarming in all directions, crowding and soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the number, which no man can count, of bad books, those rank weeds of literature, which draw nourishment from the corn and choke it. The time, money and attention of the public, which rightfully belong to good books and their noble aims, they take for themselves: they are written for the mere purpose of making money or procuring places. So they are not only useless; they do positive mischief. Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature has no other aim than to get a few shillings out of the pockets of the public; and to this end author, publisher and reviewer are in league."

Schopenhauer, 'On Books and Reading', from early 1800s I think. http://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Books_and_Reading

With some small changes in language, it could easily apply to today's news. There are many great quotes, but in essence he says reading is essential, but you must be discriminating about what you read, because most of it is garbage. And you must be careful not to read so much that you aren't able to process it or drown out your own independent thoughts and activities.

I had already reached these conclusions on my own long ago, but he puts it into words very well, and it is interesting that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The article takes a primordial approach to what news is. Technology and media have long addressed this problem, and news is really free now - thanks to Blogger, Google News, Twitter and the like.

Its also an irony that most of us discover our news on a site like Hacker News, and are seconding an opinion that news has become bad.

Some ways to rethink news:

1) News should be an ambient thing. It should be around you, and relate to what you are doing, where you are, who you are, and the people you care about.

2) The good things you do today must reflect in what you receive as news tomorrow.

3) News can be seen as appealing to the producer or consumer in you. When you read something just for infotainment, its for the consumer. When you read something, and you go like - this can help me, its helping the producer. We should strive to tilt the balance of news, and make it more productive - for you.