A replacement for TP?

October 21, 2009 6:57 AM

Can you recommend a good replacement for the "Today's Papers" feature on Slate.com? I liked that it surveyed a bunch of news/newspaper sites, and then they were conveniently summarized in one article.

I've seen that USAToday has an online daily news summary, but it's only source is USAToday. Also, I've seen that Reuter's has a similar thing of their own news stories, which I may resort to, if no one has any suggestions here.

posted by bluefly to media & arts (14 comments total)

At the risk of being too obvious, have you tried Google News? It also allows for you to filter (huh huh huh, he said 'filter') for subjects you are interested in.
posted by Pragmatica at 7:00 AM on October 21

Not sure if this is on target for what you're looking for (it doesn't include editorials, for example), but if you're just looking for news headlines with summaries (via mouseover), it's pretty cool.
posted by Mchelly at 7:04 AM on October 21

There's the Cheat Sheet It's similar to Slate's replacement for Today's Papers but only updated daily and it has longer summaries.
posted by smackfu at 7:09 AM on October 21

Not quite what you are asking for but another option is Google Fast Flip, which is customizable.
posted by gudrun at 8:19 AM on October 21 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure there's anything that currently has all the features of TP you mention: a single article every day, summarizing multiple news stories in the major newspapers. I mean, if you had asked for something like that 6 months ago, everyone probably would have just recommended TP.

Slate presumably wasn't thrilled to cancel one of their most distinctive, longstanding features. I assume they grudgingly did so out of necessity: a snazzy links-and-headlines format is more appealing to most people than a long page of plain text. (Hey, I know how you feel -- I loved TP as well -- but I have to admit that on any given day, I was more likely to quickly scan Google News or Memeorandum than to slog through TP.)

Anyway, are all of the aforementioned features essential to what you're looking for? For instance, is it OK if it just comes from one news source, or if it's not in the form of a conventional multi-paragraph article?
posted by Jaltcoh at 8:27 AM on October 21

What about The Week? Not quite the same thing, but I used to subscribe and I loved it. I've actually never looked at the website. The weekly magazine compiles the news from various media and compares and contrasts the points presented.
posted by teragram at 8:38 AM on October 21

To answer Jaltcoh, I'd prefer more than one news source, and I would prefer summaries. I usually read the news in the mornings while eating breakfast, and if I have to follow links to a bunch of places just to get the jist of the story, it takes too long and is distracting.

I think the Daily Beast summary smackfu linked to is close enough. I also like that it is only updated daily (instead of more often like the Slatest) because then I get the important stories (even if it is from the day before; at least there is more time for breathing, and I don't get caught up in Balloon Boy for no reason).

So any more suggestions for something like that? All in one article is nice, but not essential.

And thanks so much for the recs so far. I'll try them out this week, and see which ones work out.
posted by bluefly at 8:48 AM on October 21

Once correction. I'm not sure Daily Beast is only updated daily. It is organized like that with one page per day but I think they may add new stories through the day.
posted by smackfu at 8:53 AM on October 21

Today's Papers wasn't the same after Scott Shuger passed away.

I find the summaries in The Morning News twice-daily headlines are usually enough that I only click through to 2 or 3 articles from each installment.

Related snarky roundup: InfoMania's weekly We've Got You Covered segment on the week in magazines.

2nding The Week.

Also, if you have a Nintendo Wii, have you checked out its news service? Automatically aggregated AP news stories populate little slideshows (US, International, Business, Sci-Tech, Arts/Entertainment, etc.). You can just view headlines or click and zoom in to skim or read a story. I sometimes flip through it while eating breakfast. You can make a globe pop up such that stories emanate from their dateline cities. It's cute.
posted by brainwane at 9:21 AM on October 21 [1 favorite]

popurls is pretty good too but it's not really as newsy as the others. If linky is not a selling point, though, I'm not sure what to recommend that comes close to Today's Papers. Harper's does a summary type newsletter thing, but it's weekly, not daily. I tried to do the Daily Beast Cheat Sheet summary, but I found it a little too skeletal and it began to irritate me. The Morning News is also decent, but again, it's links, not summary.
posted by blucevalo at 9:30 AM on October 21

You might like the Colombia Journalism Review site, which I have at the top of my RSS feeds on Netvibes. It's not at all comprehensive and the summaries are usually of single articles or a single topic, but it does provide some excellent news analysis in the vein of TP (and a good deal of critique as well).
posted by ropeladder at 9:32 AM on October 21

I kind of like "The Week". They edit together both news and opinion from a variety of sources in a relatively unbiased way.

It's published by Felix Dennis, who started Maxim and Oz.
posted by gubenuj at 11:31 AM on October 21

Harper's Weekly Review is my favorite, though it's weekly and not daily. Short, in a snarky sort of way.
posted by craven_morhead at 11:34 AM on October 21

For international news, you might try Foreign Policy's Morning Brief.
posted by rebekah at 3:51 PM on October 21