- not about daily information (which are usually as fast as possible and don’t take the time to really understand the situation)
- not biased
- not about juicy news, but world topics that are ~objectively important
I feel like there should be a subreddit for that.
- https://www.quantamagazine.org - science-y
- https://thebrowser.com - sometimes too intellectual or focused on literature
- https://waitbutwhy.com - sometimes too simple
- https://www.project-syndicate.org - sometimes written by people that are "talkers/politicians" not "doers"
- https://www.gwern.net - The monthly newsletter is great
- https://chinai.substack.com - Chinese Papers and AI news translated
- https://www.ribbonfarm.com - great long form essays
I also got asked a couple of times about starting my own monthly mailing list with the most interesting things I find.
If you'd be interested in receiving it email me at hi[at]ferrucc[dot]io
1. I don't consume any news from televised sources,
2. I read Foreign Policy, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist and Foreign Affairs,
3. I'm generally skeptical of everything I read and I try to assume every article's author has many unknown unknowns in their reporting (to counter Gelman Amnesia),
4. Every so often (once a week or so), I read something from a news source I actively distrust just to see what else a nontrivial portion of the population believes about the world.
This isn't perfect, but if you have the free time to do that much reading I think it gets you pretty close to well-rounded. I think the only major way to improve upon this would be to add another major news source from another country for additional foreign perspective (this is why I like The Economist and Financial Times).
I found that the best source for me is The Economist: once per week, written by smart people, with good summaries of anything that is important. Delivered digitally (with an excellent audio version, too).
It is "biased" in the sense that the editors hold a set of opinions and you have to be aware of it. I do not agree with all of their opinions, but I am aware of them. The news useful even if you disagree with their interpretation or recommendations.
Surprisingly, it is the only intelligent and non-sensational news source that I have found.
It's conspicuously centrist and pro-global-capitalism (see: articles essentially saying "human lives on earth has definitely gotten better under capitalism" (and not explicitly saying "world-average QoL is the correct metric by which to measure progress", nor addressing counterfactual hypotheses), + anti-trump + pretty skeptical of brexit. These are sort of acceptable, manageable biases to my eye: is there more I'm missing?
A thousand times this. Bias is everywhere. I think people who say they're looking for an 'unbiased' source of information are really looking for a source of information they can just blindly consume without doing any pesky thinking. And if you're blindly consuming information without thinking, you're allowing someone else to think for you.
I don't understand why this isn't more common. I'm already spending 8-hours a day at work, reading stuff or parsing information in some ways. I have found that I have no mental capacity left to read a full newspaper on top of that.
Listening to a podcast while commuting is way less exhausting (to me at least).
It has in-depth analysis of current events and world topics, and is a nice mix of recent news and long-term stories. I often find myself looking for more information after reading one of their articles, as they often include a lot of references to other topics or events I am not familiar with : it feeds my curiosity this way, and I get to read various news source about one topic.
- NPR: https://www.npr.org
- Reuters: https://www.reuters.com
They can be a little bit dry sometimes but that's what professional neutral news has to be.
I like also:
- Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com
- And Politico: https://www.politico.com
And finally a financial blog I love, Matt Levine Money Stuff (it's free from his newsletter): http://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/join/4wm/moneystuff-s...
As for my criteria:
- I usually look at who owns the publication to get a sense of its positions in terms of important global affairs.
- Are they reporting all the facts or simply "lying by omission" (which tends to be a very popular tactic these days, especially when it comes to geopolitical topics).
- Balance, or what I like to call gray journalism. Because nothing is totally black or white in life.
I'm of the opinion that the Internet simply killed traditional journalism, because now anybody (given the time) can go and check the facts for any given story published by the media.
Pamphlets. Road signs. Safety labels.
As a general criteria, I would add "promotes action". What good is information if it doesn't bring any change?