That's because you were not getting news. You were getting social media. It amazes me that comments here don't distinguish between these. Facebook, twitter, google news, hackernews etc. are not news. They may all use or perhaps disseminate "news" but they are not sources of news.
Information is wrong, irrelevant, intentionally aggrevating, or all of the above. Sometimes more so, sometimes less, but very nearly always.
I'd started buring out on a noncommercial radio news habit by the late 2010s. Yes, that corresponded with an increased use of social media -- mostly Google+ and Reddit, and not Facebook or Twitter. My social life was entirely offline, I've long had the view that the Internet is for acquiring and discussing information, but not personal details.
I began reading more books and articles. And finding that what was revealed through those was that much of what is encountered through news, journalism, and broadcast ... just misses massive amounts of relevant information. You spend so much time caught up in the malinformed focus on the present that you lose any sense of connection with earlier periods and thought, much of which informs the now.
And the notion isn't new, it's an age-old criticism of the press. Neil Postman wrote of this in Amusing Ourselves to Death (1987) (https://www.worldcat.org/title/amusing-ourselves-to-death/oc...). I.F. Stone and George Seldes both made a life's work of this, from the 1920s through the 1980s. There's an excellent Stone interview online: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g
And a trailer for "Tell the Truth and Run", about George Seldes: https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=xBJ7hDVvAI0
The book Commercialism and Journalism details the problem. In 1909. It's one of those great "things really haven't changed all that much" insights: https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt
There are exceptions; there always are. But they are the exception, and the bulk of news really isn't worth bothering about. The stuff that is worth bothering about ... generally doesn't make the news.
It's hard to miss the larger stories -- they intrude into discussions and conversations. If that story is something I perceive as not useful to know or engage with I'll state as much. This includes most crime and political stories, to the extent those focus on crisis de jour, immediate and personal impacts, horse race, or some orange running its mouth off.
I'm more interested in deeper undercurrents. My guiding question over the past seven or eight years has been "what are the Big Problems". And information that doesn't address this isn't particularly interesting.
Specific major stories are. I've been following hurricane Dorian, for example, though my entry point to that wasn't news, but the https://earth.nullschool.org weather visualiser, which shows interesting phenomena. And Dorian showed up initially as a minor swirl just off the coast of Venezuela, then developed rapidly. Then it started turning up in news mentions.
I occasionally catch On the Media's weekly deep-dive into major stories of the week, or longer. That's about the right frequency for me to catch up on news, and it's no longer every week.
Mostly I'm looking at larger themes and patterns that repeat through history. Models, frames, context. Philosophy, history, systems theory, cybernetics.
Focusing exclusively on the new and now takes away from that.
The partisan politics, the faux outrage, the hyped up drama, it’s what drives clicks and ad $ and it’s awful for our mental health.
I don't care that I'm out of the loop on a lot of the national soap opera. The loop is pretty dumb usually and not worth wasting much time on. I loooove reading about local transit projects, housing development, and other local matters on the other hand. That stuff I actually use in my life.
I also only use RSS for content, which really saves me time.
I think a lot of people could stand taking a step back from the national drama and studying local issues more closely.