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Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

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Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

#1
I don't have a habit of reading news, but recently I'm thinking whether I should read or at least skim through the news title everyday, to understand better what is currently happening in my country, and in the world.

So I've tried a few times to skim through the homepage of those news agency, but I immediately felt overwhelmed as there were so many contents being listed out on the homepage.

What do you guys think? Do you guys have a habit of reading news daily or once in a while? How do you filter out the news to read? From which news sources?

Re: Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

#2
Most news platforms I come across display everything that brings clicks. Its usefulness doesn’t seem to matter. I follow specific people on twitter, follow hacker news, and thats enough. You end up being updated on what matters/truly urgent.

Re: Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

#3
My recommendations as a professional:

The kind of news you want is that which remains relevant tomorrow.

Some news are designed to create cumulative knowledge and cumulative understanding. Search for those formats and make a habit of reading them regularly, but not necessarily daily.

A great example is the economist and in particular its weekly recap.

By the way, I'm not a fan of podcasts because you're not in control when listening. They want you to spend as much time as possible, but you want to skim and skip quickly. Text is vastly superior for that.

Re: Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

#4
I tend to go by the BBC and Hacker News.

In the UK the other mainstream ones that aren't paywalled seem to be a mix of left-wing (eg. Guardian) and right-wing (eg. Daily Mail) outrage/misrepresentation/bias for argument-stoking and click-hoarding, or just local ad-ruined drivel.

Re: Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

#8
I currently have two daily sources of news, Reddit and Google News. On Reddit, it's r/worldnews (global), r/politics (US), and r/news (general US). Occasionally I'll look into Ukraine-specific subreddits to catch up on the war.

I don't think there is a massive benefit to skimming the news. I think the primary benefit is that I might see a topic that interests me and I can do a deep-dive on that and learn way more than I otherwise would. Recently, I've done "research" into Iran, the Yemen civil war, the history of taxes in the US, what kind of soil is under Florida and how continued climate change might affect it, flood insurance in the US, the history of Ukraine, Zelenskyy's politics and public support before the war, Merkel's politics towards Russia, Samsung's most popular phones in different parts of the world, chip manufacturing and node sizes, everything about the Surfside condo collapse, etc.

News is mostly clickbait and you won't learn much other than "this thing happened". What interests me most is "why did thing happen" or "what are the consequences" or "who does this affect and how", and that's when I really start to learn. Also interesting is to look into who supports what position and why.

The biggest danger, imo, is becoming jaded or depressed by reading too much negative news. That's when I know I need to take a temporary break from the daily news cycle.

Re: Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

#9
I've stopped reading news 3 years ago. One of the best decisions of my life. Before I was super anxious and had a big FOMO syndrome. Now I'm more relaxed and I sleep better.

If something is really important, I can be sure other will let me know.

Re: Ask HN: Do you read news daily?

#10
If you are in the US, the WSJ has something called the "The 10-Point" which is a curated list of the top news stories for the day, delivered via email around 8am ET every weekday. I subscribed to it a couple years ago on a whim, and I feel it fills me in enough to be "responsibly informed".
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