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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

Here's the thing: keeping up with current events is wrong. Don't try to keep up.

The right way to understand things is slowly. This is why I don't watch the TV news, I don't read mainstream news web sites.

I have two major sources of news: Le Monde (which I have daily) and The Economist (which is a weekly). Of those two I get the most information from The Economist because once a week I can read considered opinion and news not Breaking News which is irrelevant.

I also don't follow Twitter and I have a very limited set of RSS feeds. The only social news site I read is this one.

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Reminds me of this from aaronsw:
But if that's true on a scale of minutes, why longer? Instead of watching hourly updates, why not read a daily paper? Instead of reading the back and forth of a daily, why not read a weekly review? Instead of a weekly review, why not read a monthly magazine? Instead of a monthly magazine, why not read an annual book?
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

the above is unintentionally funny b/c he made a fortune off of reddit

Salon.com is pretty good too. If you subscribe they send you an email every morning with a link to one article and a short description. They might only publish three or four articles worth reading per week, but the quality of those articles is far better than anything you'll find in any newspaper. There are also almost never any factual errors, unlike the NYT. And also, unlike the NYT, it isn't full of blatant propaganda. (Ever notice how the Times always describes the warrantless wiretapping with the epithet "that begin after sept. 11th," even though their own reporting shows that claim to be false. [1])

[1] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/14/32927/2778/622/47636...

I let my subscription to Salon.com lapse around 2002 when it was no longer possible to ignore the fact that they were happy to be a blatant mouthpiece for the left. It just wasn't worth the work to sort out the good pieces from the leftist nonsense. (Also note: I'm not any more a fan of right-wing nonsense.)

> keeping up with current events is wrong. Don't try to keep up.

To the contrary, keeping up with events online gives you the ability to be proactive about acquiring knowledge, rather than waiting for what makes it though the filter of a periodical or what someone else thinks important; not to mention the bias of opinion pieces. If your periodical of choice sits on a story, or misreports, you will likely never find out about it if you don't pay attention to outside sources (e.g. the NYT sat on their report about the administration's illegal domestic spying/warrantless wiretapping program until after the 2004 election).

> If your periodical of choice sits on a story, or misreports,

If you relied on esteemed mainstream media you're underwater on a house right now. You also probably bought Cisco in 1999.

Not me. I should be running a hedge fund my returns are so great. It's because I voraciously seek out good analysis, typically non-mainstream.

What are some of your sources?

The Economist is lousy. It's just current events. It won't give you the frameworks to understand what's going on, economically or politically. An Economist reader would not have known not to buy a house in the last three years, for example.

It's lousy, but not for the reasons you've listed. A good weekly magazine would be "just current events". But The Economist offers opinions, which are as misguided as those in other publications (such as Newsweek), despite the impressive-sounding diction.

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