Ask HN: If you don't use social media, how do you get your news/updates?
5 comments
If you rely on media (traditional or social) push technology to drive your narrative, you will always be easily controlled.
Follow media from both ends of the spectrum. That will give you about 60-70% of the issues you need to watch acutely.
Otherwise, use your own observations. Read legislation; don't let media interpret it for you.
Follow media from both ends of the spectrum. That will give you about 60-70% of the issues you need to watch acutely.
Otherwise, use your own observations. Read legislation; don't let media interpret it for you.
Old fashioned news papers...
My job as a production-side journalist (sub-editing [UK term], copy-editing [US term]) used to rely on "reading in" before any shift. This meant looking at any relevant global/national/regional newspapers/magazines available - and the newsroom would have the ones that you didn't already have delivered at home.
In the mid- to late-90s and beyond, much news could be accessed online; I moved from print to online work in late-1994 at a UK newspaper group.
It was not such an upheaval for those of us who worked in news. Our dumb terminals working from mainframes had, way before my move in 1994, provided us with news "wires" from agencies - news wholesalers that provided our retail news outlets with content we could not have covered for ourselves: AP (in the US), AFP (France) PA (from the UK), AAP (from Australia and thereabouts), and Reuters (from pretty much everywhere), and a host of other agencies from elsewhere.
So, for (ahem) quite a few years, I have accessed news from all over the world, as it has been reported by media outfits (agencies) with more people on the ground than, say, retail media outlets - news brands.
Because of that, when I check news in the morning and throughout the day, I will go first to AP, AFP, Reuters, PA etc before checking their customers: The Guardian, the Times (NY and London), CNN and all the rest. Yes, some retail outlets (and I'd include the BBC in that) still have quite a few reporters on the ground, but the numbers dwindle every year.
Agencies - the wholesalers - have no axe to grind when reporting news. Their customers might be Fox at one end, and The Guardian at the other. Agencies tend to report straight down the middle; their customers spin the facts that they receive from the agencies by leaving out bits, reordering the content, supplementing that content by soliciting quotes from parties with an axe to grind etc. (This was my job, back in the day, to render news that made people feel good about their own view of life; to sell them their own prejudices.) You can still pretty much rely on agency copy to be straight.
You asked, "If you don't user social media, how do you get your news/updates?"
I would ask you, if you do use social media, how do you get your news? How do you know what news is?
It is still worth going to the closest thing you have to an original source; this is usually an agency - if it seems reliable. It is, of course, also worth looking around to check other sources - but make sure that they are primary sources.
The uncomfortable thing is that news will not come to you unbidden (so, via social media channels) without an agenda; if you want news without an agenda, you must look for it, which involves work/effort. If it arrives in your feed, it will be there because of an algorithm, which is blind and dumb, but always exploitative of you as a product.
In the mid- to late-90s and beyond, much news could be accessed online; I moved from print to online work in late-1994 at a UK newspaper group.
It was not such an upheaval for those of us who worked in news. Our dumb terminals working from mainframes had, way before my move in 1994, provided us with news "wires" from agencies - news wholesalers that provided our retail news outlets with content we could not have covered for ourselves: AP (in the US), AFP (France) PA (from the UK), AAP (from Australia and thereabouts), and Reuters (from pretty much everywhere), and a host of other agencies from elsewhere.
So, for (ahem) quite a few years, I have accessed news from all over the world, as it has been reported by media outfits (agencies) with more people on the ground than, say, retail media outlets - news brands.
Because of that, when I check news in the morning and throughout the day, I will go first to AP, AFP, Reuters, PA etc before checking their customers: The Guardian, the Times (NY and London), CNN and all the rest. Yes, some retail outlets (and I'd include the BBC in that) still have quite a few reporters on the ground, but the numbers dwindle every year.
Agencies - the wholesalers - have no axe to grind when reporting news. Their customers might be Fox at one end, and The Guardian at the other. Agencies tend to report straight down the middle; their customers spin the facts that they receive from the agencies by leaving out bits, reordering the content, supplementing that content by soliciting quotes from parties with an axe to grind etc. (This was my job, back in the day, to render news that made people feel good about their own view of life; to sell them their own prejudices.) You can still pretty much rely on agency copy to be straight.
You asked, "If you don't user social media, how do you get your news/updates?"
I would ask you, if you do use social media, how do you get your news? How do you know what news is?
It is still worth going to the closest thing you have to an original source; this is usually an agency - if it seems reliable. It is, of course, also worth looking around to check other sources - but make sure that they are primary sources.
The uncomfortable thing is that news will not come to you unbidden (so, via social media channels) without an agenda; if you want news without an agenda, you must look for it, which involves work/effort. If it arrives in your feed, it will be there because of an algorithm, which is blind and dumb, but always exploitative of you as a product.
2. About 50 international news sites...all the major channels across the globe...left, right and in-between
3. About 10-20 US aggregator/blogs. As broad a spectrum as I can stand. Weighted towards financial and engineering.
4. HN for random stuff for the youths of a certain subculture.
Remembering there is no such thing as the news or my news, only some news. Might move back to paper magazines like the Economist and the like...
Have zero need or wants for “updates”...I am not actively managing a campaign, a company, a country, or a large portfolio for someone else nor am I an aide to someone who is. I cannot imagine an engine being able to predict what news I will find relevant to be “pushed” to me. Can imagine attempts to manipulate using said updates. I remember complaints against the BBC pushing breaking updates on Royal births...
Twitter only for breaking natural disasters.