All the News That's Fit to Print

January 6, 2010 12:33 PM

For all you media junkies out there: where do you find your news?

I really want to stay super current on who's saying what. Currently, I read The New York times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Several Wired Blogs, Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Journalism lab, and Politico.

Can you recommend some other sites that I should be looking at? I would like to focus on sites that are about media itself, but plain ol' news sites with good writing and an interesting take on their subjects are just as interesting. I'm not looking for sites on any topic in particular.

Thanks for your help.

posted by orville sash to Writing & Language (22 answers total)

Take a look at slate. Also, I would suggest tying everything into the RSS reader of your choice, since that will make aggregating all of the information and reading what you want without having to scan through each source individually a lot easier. Plus, you can group your sources by hierarchy; maybe you read the NYT and Atlantic every day, but only the Wired blogs when you're bored at work, etc.
posted by craven_morhead at 12:40 PM on January 6, 2010

The Guardian
posted by ellieBOA at 1:12 PM on January 6, 2010

BBC Online
Slate -- The Slatest, News Dots
Google News
Arts and Letters Daily
The Week
Newsmap
Economist
posted by cross_impact at 1:26 PM on January 6, 2010

Huffington Post and Politco for general summaries and commentary
Drudge Report to see what the lunatic fringe is up to and what the wingnut talking points are today
Daily Kos for the leftmost spin

I also catch at least some of MSNBC's televised Morning Joe show when I can, as much for entertainment as anything else. Every time I watch this damn show I can never figure out why anybody thinks MSNBC is a left leaning network.
posted by imjustsaying at 2:19 PM on January 6, 2010

Slatest
Bloomberg
TPM
Politico
Local papers
NYT
WP
WSJ
Drudge

Those are my quick hits
posted by jckll at 2:33 PM on January 6, 2010

I've taken to following several news organizations' feeds in Twitter. I grouped them as a list, and it does a good job of giving me up to the minute local, national, and international news.
posted by reenum at 2:34 PM on January 6, 2010

Mediabistro's TVNewser blog
Greg Sargent: The Plum Line
ProPublica
The Washington Independent
Romenesko
posted by citron at 2:50 PM on January 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

On the Media (NPR's take on what the media does each week)
BAGNewsNotes (understanding and deep-reading of visual journalism)

wracking my brain for a few more...

Media Matters, maybe

Ah ha! Found a good list:

DMOZ's list of Media Watchdogs
posted by msbrauer at 3:02 PM on January 6, 2010

I'm pretty out of touch these days, but I try to check in with FiveThirtyEight once a week or so.
posted by EatTheWeek at 3:29 PM on January 6, 2010

(friend plug) sadhat.com
posted by Nameless at 3:52 PM on January 6, 2010

Fark is one I like.
posted by sporaticgenius at 5:38 PM on January 6, 2010

Used to be Google News for me, but no more. The service has gone massively downhill in the past year and a half. They bring too much of The Crazy to be of much use these days... massive over-reliance on op-eds from Faux News and WSJ rather than real news stories from real journalists, too much celebrity gossip masquerading as national news, and bupkiss from local news organs that aren't college sports scores. I've taken to reading the NYT, Boston.com and projo.com front pages, but that's less than satisfactory, and enough of a hassle where it's no longer an everyday thing.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:47 PM on January 6, 2010

My 2¢

No Agenda
/insert InTheMorning jingle

FreeTalkLive
subculture
posted by will wait 4 tanjents at 8:48 PM on January 6, 2010

AV club ftw! Comprehensive coverage-seriously, every episode of your favorite TV show, reviewed. Interviews with up-and-comers and veterans. Snarky wit without the grating quality of TWOP.
posted by alygator at 2:36 AM on January 7, 2010

Newser is a good lead in.
posted by zerobyproxy at 3:54 AM on January 7, 2010

I go to popurls and read all of the headlines...
posted by cinemafiend at 5:26 AM on January 7, 2010

I would recommend reading Democracy Now and AFP to get some balance there.
posted by Zambrano at 9:32 AM on January 7, 2010

The Real News.

Realizing that most news today is editorial, I prefer news sources that draw upon the best thinkers of our time.

You mention sites with written content, but since you don't exclude video news I am happy to recommend the Real News. Their reporting and interviews contain more socio-economic analysis than Democracy Now, and their biases, while minimal, are easily identifiable.
posted by FissionChips at 6:42 PM on January 7, 2010

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I would also add TMZ.COM, after seeing how they scooped everyone with that Leno story today. Beat the AP and The Times by 5 or 6 hours. Amazing. They seem to get the jump on everyone- and not just with entertainment stuff.
posted by Zambrano at 6:49 PM on January 7, 2010

2nding Romenesko for being a generally good round-up of news about news / print media death-watch. That last part is less fun, but useful.
posted by nicoleincanada at 10:27 AM on January 9, 2010

Oh, and MediaWorks (section of AdAge) occasionally has some good stuff on the media/marketing side of things.
posted by nicoleincanada at 10:29 AM on January 9, 2010

For the person who said "Google News has gone downhill", you know it's an automatic algorithm partially based on your reading habits and Google searches, right?

I'm very fond of Newsmap to visualize Google News for me. The site seems down, and I'm very much hoping that's temporary; their blog has recentish updates, so I'm hopeful.

I feed non-Google-news sites through Google Reader and/or iTunes podcast aggregation. iTunes grabs things like the five minute news summary from NPR, and I listen to that daily as well.
posted by talldean at 12:50 PM on January 24, 2010 [1 favorite]