For the last 4-5 years, Hacker News has been pretty much my only source of any kind of news outside of the topics that I work with on a daily basis. This is true. Before that, I did not read newspapers or follow any kind of journalism. I still recall being around age 12 or 13 and making a conscious decision not to watch TV anymore. It has been around just as much time since I last saw a TV news report. Maybe it has s…
Same. HN is the only stream of "news" I consume. And I kind of miss the older HN where non-tech "news" was immediately flagged to oblivion. So now I have to consciously skip irrelevant stuff (arguably like this one).
There was never such a time. pg himself (the creator of the site), who left in 2014, submitted way more liberally than just tech stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pg
One piece of anecdata: I subscribed to the Economist briefly last year and it was one of the best things I've done as far as advancing myself as a person. While the vast majority of what written about wasn't immediately relevant to me (compared even to a random programming-related blog post), it did a lot to enlighten me on the value of good journalism and broaden my world view as well as keeping me reasonably inform…
I am an Economist subscriber and just download the audio edition each week. I listen to it when doing other tasks that don't require 100% mental focus such as housework and am usually able to complete each week's issue before the next one releases. I am not absorbing the content as well as if I were to sit down and read each issue, but this is a reasonable tradeoff for me.
They also have an android/iphone app for subscribers, but I've had a lot of issues with playing audio through it and find it much easier to simply download each week's .zip file of .mp3's and play them with my audio player of choice.
Because it's lazy to just assume newspapers are always wrong about everything. If we don't assume newspapers are always wrong about everything, we can assume they are sometimes wrong about some things and sometimes right about other things. That makes reading the news a fact finding mission. Discerning the truth from fiction is just part of life.
The point isn’t that one should assume they are always wrong it is that one shouldn’t assume they are always right.
You started this thread with a claim of "I don't think any of the popular sources of information are trustworthy." That seems to be a position of default assuming they are wrong.
The beef I have with journalism is that every time they write on a topic I have good knowledge of, I find their coverage to be lame and lacking depth. Which leads me to a more generalized assumption that this is probably true for any given subject, except perhaps politics. Most notable example I can think of is how the media covers A.I. issues. I don't expect newspapers to have book quality analysis but at the very l…
Only the largest publications can afford or have the clout to have experts writing their stories. I don't trust WiRED to write a biology article, but with a big story NYT will reach out to a professor in the field and publish their input on the topic, for instance.
HN is my news feed for tech, but I have realised that my news feed for "rest of the world" has reduced down to radio / TV weekly comedy shows. Things like BBC news quiz or Mock The Week, (similar to US's John Oliver/ Steve Colbert) actually do a fairly good job of capturing the headlines and providing concise updates. As well as enough cynicism to keep me on my toes. The only time it failed me was a few years back wh…
You have just stated that your source of news is comedians who were doing standup routines in nightclubs before their current TV gig and, in fact, still do comedy at night clubs (John Oliver for one). That's OK. A lot of people aren't aware of that. You can fix that.
Can you be specific about what you find problematic about that?
The point isn’t that one should assume they are always wrong it is that one shouldn’t assume they are always right.
You started this thread with a claim of "I don't think any of the popular sources of information are trustworthy." That seems to be a position of default assuming they are wrong.
Saying that something is not trustworthy is literally saying it is not something that is able to be relied upon to be truthful. This means one should not assume the source is correct. It certainly doesn't mean to assume it is wrong.
A surprising percentage of what is up as news is placement. You'll see an interesting article about the Boer War, then a couple of days later you'll see another, which is a bit strange, and then a couple of days later you'll see an ad for a movie with a couple of big name stars that is set in the Boer War. Then you realize that you've been tricked into an ad campaign. That's discouraging.
More likely: "Hey journalist #213, there is this movie coming out about the boer war and it should be a hit. Why don't you and #214 and #215 get together in the conference room and research and write some articles about it. People will probably read it." "sure thing, chief."
repeat each publisher.
What is more parsimonious, someone writing context pieces for ad views ahead of a known impending cultural event, or some big bad advertising conspiracy trying to inception you into watching a movie about the boer war.
Ezra Taft Benson: "One must select wisely a source of news; otherwise it would be better to be uninformed than misinformed." My own view is that you should reduce consumption dramatically, but still read some publications. And realize that in software, we have our own form of “news” that this missive applies to. Here’s my media literacy guide: https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/README.... And one ju…
Very cool. Thanks for sharing. FWIW sharing my primary global non-tech news source while we are at it: The Financial Times to me is all the important news without the fluff and very much worth the subscription price. Obviously there is a heavy focus on economic news (but not exclusively). I especially like the News Briefing which I can listen to conveniently with a "Hey Siri, play the FT News Briefing" while doing my…
There is always western bias. You are in the U.S., with your U.S. perspective, probably reading a piece by someone with a U.S. perspective. How can you possibly write accurately about Malaysia if you've never grown up there, don't know the social customs, don't know what people do there, don't know the slang, don't have friends or relatives there, never had a job there, never went to school there, never eaten the food there, never cooked the food there, etc. Bias exists because you can't possibly write about something you have no perspective on, and you can't find a good writer with relevant perspective on every single event in the world; there will never be unbiased news because it is impossible to get perspective on every event.
> Why one has to be an informed citizen? Why one has to vote? Why one has to always protest? Why one has to always support something? Is not in your interest. Is in the interest of the elected officials. They get to you through the news and social media (by sharing). In simple words: they don't give a F about you, the taxes or the roads.
They give an F about being re-elected though, which you have control over.
I, for one, would love a monthly email newsletter that summarizes the top ~100 news stories of the past 30 days. Things that turned out to be irrelevant would be ignored, while things that turned out to be important would be included and briefly commented upon. Magazines like The Economist sort of fulfill this role, but they are often a little too detailed for the high-level overview I'm looking for.
NYT and WaPo have weekly (daily too) newsletters that you can just have a rule move to a folder and check once a month.