Slower News
slowernews.com
slowernews.com
Which is why there's a sea of difference in the quality between an Economist opinion piece (which takes a week to craft), a Bloomberg opinion piece (which takes a couple of days unless it's an expert or Matt Levine), or a standard run of the mill media outlet opinion piece (usually the next day).
But there is another: Reporting news that already happened.
See, most news report on what will happen today, what is expected to happen within 3 days, 1 month. It builds expectations and stress in the mindset of the listener; It keeps the audience hung to the news stream but I think it is the most toxic characteristic, even before the divisive aspect of current news providers.
It’s as if we got so fast that instead of reporting on news « within 1 day! » or « within 1 hour! », we provide the news within « -3 hours ».
If you’re reading the AP wire then yes it is different, it’s just dry facts with limited context or framing.
That’s not how most people consume news though. That is far too dry for most and you’ll likely miss key observations because you can’t possibly be up to speed with every context. In mainstream news the correspondent for X will helpfully add that knowledge to the story being reported so you can understand the new facts in context.
News as I’m thinking you’re meaning it, would be that model, the facts and a curtailed context, often eliding the “for and against” arguments to go straight to a ready to consume conclusion that should neatly fit the reader’s prior preferences.
The exploration of the for and against is usually cut out of news since it sells better and costs less to produce.
The internet has managed to blur the lines and people are convinced anything and everything is automatically news.
E.g. my OnlyTheFacts (tm) news org who doesn’t add any form of opinion to the news they report might still choose to just not report some types of story and choose to always cover a relatively rare type of event skewing the perception of reportable news in the world.
I’m not aware of any news vendors who list the stories they choose not to cover.
I don’t think this is anything new to the 21st or even to the 20th century.
The only thing I am aware of that is even close is Project Censored, which aims to document the most important stories that have been ignored by all major news outlets each year:
https://www.projectcensored.org/category/the-top-25-censored...
Can you point out an opinion expressed by the publication?
As for covered in the news, they do reference the niche sites which cover the stories they’re reporting but i would take it to mean they’ve not been reported in the mainstream news. The two stories i read don't appear in a google news search for example?
This is true, but I don't see this as a huge problem. Most 'big news' is very easily understood by lay people (e.g. "Congress is debating a pandemic relief bill" or "The World Trade Center has been struck by aircraft"), or it has a long delay before the news is actionable.
Something complex like the financial response to the pandemic leaves plenty of time to write a more thoughtful analysis. The only fast 'news' the mainstream should be reporting on is what various interested parties are saying and when to expect certain details. Anything more than that and they themselves become the fount of misinformation because they can't possibly have all the details. If the people voting on the 5,000+ page omnibus spending bill didn't have time to read it, with all their support staff pitching in ~ and considering the fact that they helped write it ~ what chance does a news organization have?
> In mainstream news the correspondent for X will helpfully add that knowledge to the story being reported so you can understand the new facts in context.
I don't think this is actually helpful at all. Very rarely is the information complete or accurate. It's always presented as being fact, when it is often more opinion. We killed a lot of people over yellowcake uranium that never actually existed while the news assured everyone it did. [0]Of course, the evidence the news was citing was debunked by our allies almost immediately.
Personally, I think so-called news should behave more responsibly, take their time, and produce more complete analysis so they can actually inform instead of mislead the people.
[0]https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-wh...
Google actually had this c. 2012 - there was a portion of the SRP that was devoted to "long form" articles, long articles that continued to get searched for months after they came out. It surfaced some really good content, but the SRP was probably was the wrong format to put this on. I think it was unlaunched after a few years, unfortunately.
Not sure where I read this idea first, may have been Taleb, but it's something I've seen pop up as wanted in this hyperactive news environment.
I’d be happy to read a well-written yearly summary of the most important news in neuroscience, for example.
I can't speak on their printed work but my first issue is arriving any day.
The key is finding slow news for the niche you care about.
Personally I think that a big gap is local news. Would love a site like wickedlocal but where I get things weekly and have no ads or superfluous stories. I’d pay for it.
I’m experimenting with some automated scraping of news sources (Twitter, Reddit, town websites, stores, restaurants, etc) for my town. Hoping to be able to get it do a point where I can produce something of value on 1hr a week.
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with them anyhow, nor use their service.
Which is fine if you’re looking for that sort of commentary, but in terms of news it’s not what I was looking for.
The NYRB leans marxism-aware global left, with a heavy dose of academic anaesthesia.
Neither is more "partisan" (I think ideological is likely a better word). You just don't notice it in the Economist because they rarely argue against what already is (since it suits them, mostly, just fine).
As an aside, do you know anything like nyrob that has something equivalent to the economists “the world this week”? Would be neat to see a similar format from two separate ideologies.
I know you have an RSS feed, and the crowd here probably is all for RSS, but I would love it if I could leave my email somewhere and get a notification when a new submit was posted.
[1] https://embit.ca
Only updated on Sundays with the top headlines of the week. No annoying pings, no data collection, etc.
I was demotivated when I scrolled through this, but luckily I still feel as though mine is different enough.
For me the key is that content can come every day, but it is delayed based on it’s importance. So instead of Sunday news printing something that happened Saturday, this model prints about the Saturday event two weeks later on a Tuesday when all the facts are known. But it doesn’t have to be every day.
The hard part is that I don’t just want this for myself, I want this for everyone that is currently captured by the toxic 24/7 9/11-style news cycle. The society is in a permanent panic/outrage mode. Breaking that will be tough.
The news cycle is absolutely toxic. People shouldn't have 24/7 access to the news. The pressure to create news immediately, and in turn, to read them it immediately, is harmful for everyone.
Plus, with very few exceptions, it doesn't matter if you hear about it in 2 seconds or 2 weeks.
I hope to hear about what you're building! Sounds great.
Edit: it is under the MIT license so free to use commercially
Needs an option to remove underlines and no dark mode.