Where can I get the 'right amount' of news?
June 12, 2020 10:55 AM Subscribe
I'm trying to fight an unhealthy addiction to the news/soap opera hybrid we have in the United States. But I want to stay aware enough to at least try to make a tiny difference.
TMI:
I've become very negative. It's affecting my home life. I'm a voracious reader, and mostly I read the news and analysis of it these days. It's almost all I want to talk about. But it's not all that some people want to hear about; in fact, at least one person doesn't want to hear about it at all.
I recognize that a lot of my consumption is prurient, like a version of The Wire is going on all around us except now we aren't limited to an hour a week, 13 weeks a year. Yet this seems to be not just the best but also the worst time to just disconnect from the news. Arguably excessive consumption of news/analysis/smart voices on Twitter helped shape my response to the pandemic, and my understanding of some of the behind-the-scenes drama has made me even more cautious in rejoining society. This can be enormously important. E.g., that one person mentioned above went to the beach nearby when it reopened, and used the porta-john -- just about the most dangerous place I think you can go. But you don't learn that from scanning the headlines on Google News. So I was in a position to be able to inform here, and she was willing to formulate a plan to work around it. It's not entirely overdramatic to say that my unhealthy overconsumption of the news might have helped save my life, and/or hers/our kid's.
Not every example is as dramatic, but deep understanding of what's going on does have other benefits. Sometimes a headline is not enough to get me to donate or otherwise get involved; it can take either the detail you have to dig for or the inundation of reading piece after piece on a subject. I'm also a Jew, and some of us have this haunted-by-the-Holocaust thing going on. Even if I never acted, bearing witness seems like the bare minimum a person should have to do -- especially a person in a demographic not directly affected by things like racial injustice and police brutality. But if I could find a balance between contributing and staying married, that seems preferable.
Are you aware of a news source where I can get much of the same information, but without wallowing in it? Or is it just not possible to be that on top of things without being personally affected?
TMI:
I've become very negative. It's affecting my home life. I'm a voracious reader, and mostly I read the news and analysis of it these days. It's almost all I want to talk about. But it's not all that some people want to hear about; in fact, at least one person doesn't want to hear about it at all.
I recognize that a lot of my consumption is prurient, like a version of The Wire is going on all around us except now we aren't limited to an hour a week, 13 weeks a year. Yet this seems to be not just the best but also the worst time to just disconnect from the news. Arguably excessive consumption of news/analysis/smart voices on Twitter helped shape my response to the pandemic, and my understanding of some of the behind-the-scenes drama has made me even more cautious in rejoining society. This can be enormously important. E.g., that one person mentioned above went to the beach nearby when it reopened, and used the porta-john -- just about the most dangerous place I think you can go. But you don't learn that from scanning the headlines on Google News. So I was in a position to be able to inform here, and she was willing to formulate a plan to work around it. It's not entirely overdramatic to say that my unhealthy overconsumption of the news might have helped save my life, and/or hers/our kid's.
Not every example is as dramatic, but deep understanding of what's going on does have other benefits. Sometimes a headline is not enough to get me to donate or otherwise get involved; it can take either the detail you have to dig for or the inundation of reading piece after piece on a subject. I'm also a Jew, and some of us have this haunted-by-the-Holocaust thing going on. Even if I never acted, bearing witness seems like the bare minimum a person should have to do -- especially a person in a demographic not directly affected by things like racial injustice and police brutality. But if I could find a balance between contributing and staying married, that seems preferable.
Are you aware of a news source where I can get much of the same information, but without wallowing in it? Or is it just not possible to be that on top of things without being personally affected?
Best answer: My approach has been to get an online subscription to a national newspaper and a local newspaper, then subscribe to their top-stories email digest, and skim through the headlines in the morning. If something feels important enough for me to click through to get more context, then I do, but usually after the headlines I consciously avoid news sources for the rest of the day.
Don't bother with cable news (or most TV news, really), it feeds on your eyeballs and it knows this, so it tries to make itself as tasty as possible to the human brain, and it usually does this by serving up a fresh helping of outrage.
posted by Aleyn at 11:16 AM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
Don't bother with cable news (or most TV news, really), it feeds on your eyeballs and it knows this, so it tries to make itself as tasty as possible to the human brain, and it usually does this by serving up a fresh helping of outrage.
posted by Aleyn at 11:16 AM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
Subscribe to your nearest big-city newspaper and (if applicable) your more local newspaper. Delete Twitter from your phone.
At roughly the same time every day, set a timer for 45 minutes and re-install Twitter on your phone. While it's loading, put it down and read the newspapers.
When the 45-minute timer goes off, reset it to 15 minutes. You can check Twitter if you want, or continue reading the papers.
When the 15-minute timer goes off, read the comics (or some other section of the paper that you actively enjoy). When you've finished that, delete Twitter from your phone. Tell your significant other about no more than two interesting things you discovered (at least one must be positive).
Throw the papers into recycling. Take a deep breath while you're standing at the recycling bin.
You're done for the day. You have learned and probably researched some of the important things. If you feel you need to do anything else, now is the time.
posted by Etrigan at 11:18 AM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
At roughly the same time every day, set a timer for 45 minutes and re-install Twitter on your phone. While it's loading, put it down and read the newspapers.
When the 45-minute timer goes off, reset it to 15 minutes. You can check Twitter if you want, or continue reading the papers.
When the 15-minute timer goes off, read the comics (or some other section of the paper that you actively enjoy). When you've finished that, delete Twitter from your phone. Tell your significant other about no more than two interesting things you discovered (at least one must be positive).
Throw the papers into recycling. Take a deep breath while you're standing at the recycling bin.
You're done for the day. You have learned and probably researched some of the important things. If you feel you need to do anything else, now is the time.
posted by Etrigan at 11:18 AM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
I'd second following a national and local news source. My one modifier to that would be to make your national source an international source instead. It'll still have a lot of US news but won't have as much commentary on it - there will still commentary but it won't be like an op-ed after op-ed over the same thing.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:30 AM on June 12, 2020
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:30 AM on June 12, 2020
I think subscribing to a high quality newspaper online is the way to go. I'm in California and subscribe to the LA Times - I am not in LA but it has good statewide coverage and AP national and international coverage. Reporting is of good quality, the big points are covered, and it is not the wall of horror that is the twitter scroll. The Washington Post or Guardian UK are options that are more national or international in scope. Please do subscribe, good reporting costs money.
posted by latkes at 11:36 AM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by latkes at 11:36 AM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Also regarding twitter specifically, I've found that it helps a *lot* to turn off retweets for pretty much everyone. It vastly cuts down on the noise and especially the stuff that causes the most outrage for me.
Another thing you can do is use the Lists feature to "subscribe" to twitter feeds for news/analysis/smart voices that you want to pay attention to, but don't necessarily want to have in your main feed. (You'd need to unfollow them as well as include them in a list to make that work tho.) Then, set aside a short amount of time to check that list and leave it alone the rest of the time.
The idea is to make sure you are the one in control with how you engage with the news. It does no one, least of all yourself, any good to be wallowing in pessimism. You will need to make peace with the fact that you may miss out on some things sometimes, but in the long run it is so much better for one's mental health. (I know it has been for mine, at least.)
posted by Aleyn at 11:38 AM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
Another thing you can do is use the Lists feature to "subscribe" to twitter feeds for news/analysis/smart voices that you want to pay attention to, but don't necessarily want to have in your main feed. (You'd need to unfollow them as well as include them in a list to make that work tho.) Then, set aside a short amount of time to check that list and leave it alone the rest of the time.
The idea is to make sure you are the one in control with how you engage with the news. It does no one, least of all yourself, any good to be wallowing in pessimism. You will need to make peace with the fact that you may miss out on some things sometimes, but in the long run it is so much better for one's mental health. (I know it has been for mine, at least.)
posted by Aleyn at 11:38 AM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
Counterintuitive suggestion forthcoming.
The problem with subscribing to high-quality news sources is that you'll be tempted to actually read them, going deeper than you'd probably like to go. So do the opposite: go low-quality. I get the vast majority of my news from the front page of Yahoo (along with a significant amount of garbage - Yahoo's algorithms have somehow determined that my primary interests are lesser Kardashians, Bebe Rexha, and people with facial tattoos). I am a masochist, so I will occasionally click through to an article, which I immediately regret.
I also subscribe to a couple of email newsletters (NextDraft, Digg Editions), and between Yahoo, email, and what's left of Facebook (I've unfollowed all but like three people), that keeps me surprisingly well informed. My wife is a therapist, and on a daily basis, she'll ask me "have you heard of $thing that my client mentioned?", and I will indeed have heard about it and can talk about it in some detail. And sorry for the humblebrag, but I have a .718 correct answer rate in Current Events questions on LearnedLeague. All this without reading anything beyond headlines.
Alternatively, if you read paywalled periodicals but don't pay to subscribe, you can *only* read headlines. Either way works. The point is that the headlines are all you need.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:50 AM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
The problem with subscribing to high-quality news sources is that you'll be tempted to actually read them, going deeper than you'd probably like to go. So do the opposite: go low-quality. I get the vast majority of my news from the front page of Yahoo (along with a significant amount of garbage - Yahoo's algorithms have somehow determined that my primary interests are lesser Kardashians, Bebe Rexha, and people with facial tattoos). I am a masochist, so I will occasionally click through to an article, which I immediately regret.
I also subscribe to a couple of email newsletters (NextDraft, Digg Editions), and between Yahoo, email, and what's left of Facebook (I've unfollowed all but like three people), that keeps me surprisingly well informed. My wife is a therapist, and on a daily basis, she'll ask me "have you heard of $thing that my client mentioned?", and I will indeed have heard about it and can talk about it in some detail. And sorry for the humblebrag, but I have a .718 correct answer rate in Current Events questions on LearnedLeague. All this without reading anything beyond headlines.
Alternatively, if you read paywalled periodicals but don't pay to subscribe, you can *only* read headlines. Either way works. The point is that the headlines are all you need.
posted by kevinbelt at 11:50 AM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
I have made a deal with one of my friends where we take turns monitoring the news and tell the other one what's important according to that person's stated criteria. We each get to cut our hypervigilance by 50% without missing out on anything important. On our "on" days we can dive as deep as we want (which is becoming increasingly less deep for me as my brain figures out that I can survive on less than a 24-hour firehose of upsetting news). It's a good system. I like it.
posted by HotToddy at 11:50 AM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by HotToddy at 11:50 AM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
Please do subscribe, good reporting costs money.
What latkes said!
I strongly suggest reading hard-copy papers, reading what's there of interest to you, and then stopping for the day!
posted by jgirl at 11:58 AM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
What latkes said!
I strongly suggest reading hard-copy papers, reading what's there of interest to you, and then stopping for the day!
posted by jgirl at 11:58 AM on June 12, 2020 [3 favorites]
FYI the LA Times workers fought hard to win a union a couple years ago. Because they are union, they are doing reduced hours instead of being layed off as COVID has caused huge losses of ad revenue for all news outlets - this on top of the way Facebook steals so much ad money anyway. Moving workers to one day a week furlough preserves the essential experience and skills in the newspaper, and also of course keeps these absolutely essential workers employed! This is the kind of thing that only can be achieved by being in a union newsroom. So this is my plug again to please subscribe. (I also donate to Reveal, Pro Publica, the Guardian and my local NPR affiliate if anyone reading this is looking for other ways to keep in depth coverage going at an absolutely critical moment)
posted by latkes at 12:10 PM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by latkes at 12:10 PM on June 12, 2020 [4 favorites]
What works for me (but I don't know if it would for you) is I use Pocket. I use the Firefox "Add to Pocket" when I see something I might want to read later. I review AP and Wash Post apps on my phone for possible articles to save, plus the Pro Publica newsletter. I also use Pinboard Popular and Wired that I happen to belong to.
When I am in line somewhere or waiting for my wife or whatever I use the Pocket App to review recently saved stories. It tells me the approximate time it would take to read the article, so I can make a cost/benefit decision. Pocket doesn't tell me how many articles I have saved but I suspect more than I could ever read! But if I see a trend in the world and suspect I may have saved stuff about it I use the Pocket search. After reading I tag/favorite the article and archive it (or if it turns out to be click bait then I send it right to the trash can).
Also, my wife has a rule that I can only tell her a depressing news story if I include a positive one at the same time.
YMMV.
posted by forthright at 2:27 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
When I am in line somewhere or waiting for my wife or whatever I use the Pocket App to review recently saved stories. It tells me the approximate time it would take to read the article, so I can make a cost/benefit decision. Pocket doesn't tell me how many articles I have saved but I suspect more than I could ever read! But if I see a trend in the world and suspect I may have saved stuff about it I use the Pocket search. After reading I tag/favorite the article and archive it (or if it turns out to be click bait then I send it right to the trash can).
Also, my wife has a rule that I can only tell her a depressing news story if I include a positive one at the same time.
YMMV.
posted by forthright at 2:27 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
> whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com
Hah! I registered whydoidothistomyself.com a few weeks ago, but it just drops you on Google News.
As you can tell from above I have similar problem with reading more news than is good for me. The strategy that's worked best for me is that when I read my first news site headline for the day I have one hour to take in all the news I want and then I'm done. Unfortunately I still get caught up in people's facebook posts, but the strategy has helped in general.
My original plan was to only read news every few days (since actual developments in COVID came about that often) but this new crisis is developing at the very least on a daily scale if not faster. Theoretically the hour to hour stuff could wait, but as you say there's some prurient interest there. So one hour, once a day.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:13 PM on June 12, 2020
Hah! I registered whydoidothistomyself.com a few weeks ago, but it just drops you on Google News.
As you can tell from above I have similar problem with reading more news than is good for me. The strategy that's worked best for me is that when I read my first news site headline for the day I have one hour to take in all the news I want and then I'm done. Unfortunately I still get caught up in people's facebook posts, but the strategy has helped in general.
My original plan was to only read news every few days (since actual developments in COVID came about that often) but this new crisis is developing at the very least on a daily scale if not faster. Theoretically the hour to hour stuff could wait, but as you say there's some prurient interest there. So one hour, once a day.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 3:13 PM on June 12, 2020
If the pictures & video are a major part of the problem:
lite.cnn.com/en
posted by kidbritish at 4:15 PM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
lite.cnn.com/en
posted by kidbritish at 4:15 PM on June 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
Add the Daily PNut to the already-mentioned whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com, and you’re good to go.
posted by ReginaHart at 4:17 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by ReginaHart at 4:17 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
Allow me to stan for a probably-dying technology, the RSS reader. Go to Feedly, set up an account, and subscribe to something like the Associated Press, which gives you news stories but avoids deep dives one way or the other. You can even set it so you only see headlines and don't have to go deeper, if you want.
You can also subscribe to all manner of other feeds as well (most websites work with Feedly, including the ones mentioned elsewhere in this thread), but for news, AP is a pretty good, plain vanilla (as much as that's possible in the current news environment) place to get news from.
posted by pdb at 4:34 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
You can also subscribe to all manner of other feeds as well (most websites work with Feedly, including the ones mentioned elsewhere in this thread), but for news, AP is a pretty good, plain vanilla (as much as that's possible in the current news environment) place to get news from.
posted by pdb at 4:34 PM on June 12, 2020 [1 favorite]
Newlsetters work for me. My favorite at the moment is Crooked.com's What A Day nightly newsletter.
posted by merejane at 9:56 PM on June 12, 2020
posted by merejane at 9:56 PM on June 12, 2020
I've chosen "single trusted source of news" over sifting through news and opinion being my own responsibility lately and I can see why people enjoyed it so much pre-internet, it's been a nice change. I watch this twice a week for my US politics news and feel well informed (and know enough to be part of conversations with others who want to talk politics) while getting hours and hours of my life back every week:
Planet America
They're Australians (it's from the public broadcaster) who are fascinated by America, one who is into history and the other who clearly spends every waking minute reading American news, but I like the slightly detatched perspective that them being on the other side of the world brings. Just one issue, but they were ultra vigilant about covid and shaped my own response too.
Easy enough for me to say not being an Amercian, but I've found similar go-tos that work for me for my own country's news to keep me off that twitter hamster wheel too (a morning summary newsletter from a diverse independent online newspaper + the public broadcaster's once weekly politics in review show).
posted by hotcoroner at 5:17 AM on June 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
Planet America
They're Australians (it's from the public broadcaster) who are fascinated by America, one who is into history and the other who clearly spends every waking minute reading American news, but I like the slightly detatched perspective that them being on the other side of the world brings. Just one issue, but they were ultra vigilant about covid and shaped my own response too.
Easy enough for me to say not being an Amercian, but I've found similar go-tos that work for me for my own country's news to keep me off that twitter hamster wheel too (a morning summary newsletter from a diverse independent online newspaper + the public broadcaster's once weekly politics in review show).
posted by hotcoroner at 5:17 AM on June 13, 2020 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks very much to everyone. There honestly wasn't a bad suggestion in here. I'm leaning toward continuing to trawl Talking Points Memo a few times a day and looking through the posts from the writers I like on Twitter about four times a week, but maybe culling that list down from ten to, uh, six, and clicking through to pieces they recommend but didn't write a little less often/more controlledly. No more Google News or iPhone News. I already don't watch anything beyond John Oliver. As long as the pandemic is still a thing, I'll stay subscribed to the Post's daily newsletter and continue to occasionally click through.
I worry that this is a half-measure. The writers I like, I like because they're passionate. I might still get riled up. This is maybe an experiment to see whether cutting my exposure time in half (and making room for other interests) makes a real difference, or if I need to be more severe with myself. If the latter, I'll be back here trying all of your ideas until one works, probably starting with subscribing to the Post and limiting myself to that. (I live in a smaller town with little local news that much affects me.)
Thanks again to all for taking the time to try to help me.
posted by troywestfield at 11:25 AM on June 14, 2020
I worry that this is a half-measure. The writers I like, I like because they're passionate. I might still get riled up. This is maybe an experiment to see whether cutting my exposure time in half (and making room for other interests) makes a real difference, or if I need to be more severe with myself. If the latter, I'll be back here trying all of your ideas until one works, probably starting with subscribing to the Post and limiting myself to that. (I live in a smaller town with little local news that much affects me.)
Thanks again to all for taking the time to try to help me.
posted by troywestfield at 11:25 AM on June 14, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:15 AM on June 12, 2020 [5 favorites]