News site offering "briefings" on news stories?

January 31, 2006 1:20 PM

I’m looking for a special kind of news website or resource.

I’m essentially looking for a website that offers abbreviated summaries of news as it’s happening. Not full news stories, but not headlines, either. A summary usually no more than eight or ten lines in length, but hopefully updated throughout the day.

Essentially, I’d like a place to turn to where I can briefly ready about eight or nine paragraphs’ worth of text and get a general sense of the big events that occurred today. A “daily briefing,” so to speak, but comprehensively covering current events, and ideally available as quickly as normal newswire items (an example from today’s news: I wouldn’t want to be waiting until this evening or tomorrow morning to find out Greenspan’s replacement got confirmed).

Ideally, such a site would be relatively free from bias (i.e., I don't think Fox News would be a great source -- but I'm not exactly going to be looking at Daily Kos either!).

Does such a site exist?

posted by WCityMike to grab bag (6 comments total)

news.google.com offers the top 3 stories in 9 categories, and draws from many different sources. Is that what you mean?
posted by grateful at 1:31 PM on January 31, 2006

Wikipedia's Current Events.
posted by glibhamdreck at 1:33 PM on January 31, 2006

CNN has a "wire" with 2-3 paragraph versions of stories.
posted by smackfu at 2:20 PM on January 31, 2006

My SO writes for JURIST's Paperchase. It's mostly news stories that have some sort of a legal angle, but that seems to be most of them nowadays and it's free of the "OMFG Brittney ate a bagel!!!" fluff on a lot of the other news sites. The site tries to be pretty objective with links to more information usually on Wikipedia or official sites. I find their format a little offputting, but it's pretty straightforward news.
posted by jessamyn at 2:59 PM on January 31, 2006

I really like memeorandum for this purpose. It essentially follows the top news stories of the day, updating itself every 5 minutes, and presents the resulting discussion from the blogosphere. It's a great way to catch the main news of the day from the MSM and then read the (admittedly partisan and biased) responses from around the rest of the internet.

On preview: Re-reading your question, this may not be precisely what you are asking for, but memeorandum is really great at what it does - I think it's worth giving a look!
posted by youarenothere at 8:37 PM on January 31, 2006

I've best-answered the two that really did the trick for me, CNN definitely being almost exactly what I was looking for.

However, all the sites provided are very much appreciated. Thanks!
posted by WCityMike at 8:17 AM on February 1, 2006