I used to read quite a bit of news, sometimes I still try, but tbh every news site feels so hostile I have a hard time trusting it’s a decent source.
I prefer tech, science(space, physics, robotics), gaming, programming, philosophy, music, computing, and just about any article that could teach me about new things, even if they aren’t current! I want to learn.
The big no and really the only thing I’m totally averse to is politics. I get some things I like can cross into it, but certain political headlines can ruin my mood all day. I find when I follow political news I become an angry individual. Covid was when I stopped consuming news, because I was so stressed and angry at the world that my mental health was gone.
What I’m really looking for is thoroughly researched statement of facts, and I’m cool with there being some frosting on the cake. I just don’t want someome who tells me what google is doing is the greatest thing ever because I’ll have less cookie popups without telling me why I won’t have them. I would prefer a source with unbiased opinions, but I know that isn’t realistic, we all have them. Any one who can write an article and question themselves is a plus. I don’t care if their site is a nightmare, I’ll manage it with other means.
I honestly get most of my news here or from podcasts(99pi would be an ideal example of what I’d want in article form) and sometimes I would like a different source than Lemmy.
One last preference, I would prefer no drama. I don’t want to know what x youtuber said to y and why they were “slammed” or why A company is putting B company out of business.
If you have a specific way of following your preferred outlet, outside of just doing it in browser, what do you do? It would be awesome to have a feed of news that I maintain myself.
Trust me, I understand I’m looking for a unicorn. Don’t try and fit everything with your suggestions because the reason I’m here is that I want multiple decent sources.
Tldr: looking for a decent source(s) of non-political news, I don’t mind some hyperbole but would prefer that the author can recognize their biases. Also let me know if you use atypical methods to read your news, such as a custom feed.
E: Thanks for all of the suggestions! I’ll be looking into them all as I can.
I really like 1440 news which is a news aggregation/curation service. They try to be politically unbiased, and they send you an email each morning with the news from yesterday (sort of like a print newspaper).
I also read allsides.com sometimes, which is another unbiased aggregator service.
A heavily curated blocklist for google news. I’ve got 220 “news” outlets removed, so that I basically just get something from about 20 remaining sources displayed.
I don’t really follow individual authors or content producers for news anymore, sooner or later they all go downhill in quality.
sometimes I would like a different source than Lemmy
If using an aggregator is still overkill for you, I suggest using Feedly and populate it from your favourite sources here.
You can set it to give you only three articles per day from those, which is actually how my brother uses it. I used it for a long time before finding Reddit and now Lemmy, and always found the Android app to be very good.
let me know if you use atypical methods to read your news, such as a custom feed.
While Feedly exists for that purpose, you are missing the social aspect of Lemmy/the Fediverse. I now use the Jerboa app as my only social media, and I filter by subscribed only and sort by new. It makes the feed curated enough for my needs and I get to talk to people who I wouldn’t otherwise, about things I may not IRL. That experience as a whole makes news consumption much more agreeable to me.
If you want to keep a separate “digital newspaper” then Feedly works well.
I’ve started to curate my own rss feed for news (largely a mix of art, tech, and socio-economic commentary). One of the most interesting writers/artists/podcasters I recently discovered is Caitlin Johnstone, and highly recommend subbing/supporting her any chance I get.
Ground News is far from perfect, but it’s the sweet spot for me. It shows you headlines of the same story as reported by different outlets and tells you where on the left-right spectrum the outlets sit. It also shows a spread of what percent of reports on the story are left, center, and right. My biggest issue with it is that it tends to label some centrist or unbiased outlets as left. CNN is more center-right now and AP is pretty much as unbiased as it gets, but they’re both labeled left.
There’s a paid tier that really narrows shit down, but I’m liking the free tier just fine. I feel informed but not inundated, aware but not overwhelmed. I launch the app usually 2-3 times per day and just spend maybe 2-3 minutes scrolling and reading each time. That’s plenty for me. I do miss the comments at r/politics sometimes because people would call out shitty sources or elaborate further or engage in meaningful discussion.
On Lemmy there is https://fedinews.net/m/ImproveTheNews which is an interesting project from MIT. It is AI generated, which I a generally against, it is not without it’s faults. It does quote multiple sources though so you can follow the sources you are interested in.
I find it a good read. There is almost no discussion though, except when it is called out for parsing something incorrectly.
Axios is very good. Very dry journalism - almost crossing into news agency territory -, very fact-based, always mentioning the different positions on the matter at hand. They do talk about politics but you can just visit the other sections. They are especially big on tech stuff
EDIT: For how to get news, I use RSS. Inoreader in particular lets you subscribe to entire sites or just specific pages. It’s possibly the best piece of software I’ve ever tried
Heise online and their (German) magazines.
