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Comment by keyle | Hacker News Reader

It's fantastic to see articles that focus on the positives. Most media and the press are all about the daily, the shocking and the hurtful. This is good news.

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The irony is that the "news" often focuses on exceptional events, which tends to result in having a skewed view of the world.

If you haven't read "It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News"[1] by Drew Curtis, then I highly recommend it to explain quite a lot of the process and thinking of the news. It might not be the most serious, and it is funny, but it digs into the truths of the beast.

1) http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-News-Fark-Media/dp/1592403662/

My life has become markedly better since I cut out following daily mainstream news. I realized I wasn't gaining anything from it, just loosing.

I'm curious as to where you get your news instead. I feel like you do and I've been looking for more thoughtful places to get news.

http://www.stratfor.com and the like.

Protip: If you abandon your subscription in last stage of the cart and come back later, it knocks 50% off the price. It did for me anyway.

The MSM creates a false world view by creating an impression that rare, exciting events are the norm. Stratfor creates a false world view by "contextualizing" current events and making predictions, thus creating a false impression that the future is knowable.

Pick the fantasy you're most comfortable with.

Yes, a lot of the analysis is quite silly. It's a good way to find out about stuff though.

I'd actually recommend the Economist - the writing is generally pretty good (in my opinion), but more importantly, as a weekly publication rather than daily, it's less knee-jerk about getting out the story quickly, and more focused on actually understanding the news and the implications of it.

I learn more from reading the 2 front page summaries (news + business) in the Economist than from all my internet daily news reading.

Sibling mentioned The Economist; I read Prospect for similar reasons (it's monthly, so even more so), and reading something a bit leftist helps balance something a bit rightist. (I also read TIME, but I hear the US edition is quite dumbed down, so maybe only if you can get a European or Asian edition).

Last Week Tonight by John Oliver is a good source of news when it is in-season.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight

I also cut out mainstream news consumption.

For the most part, I simply haven't missed it. Events worthy of my attention (i.e. that will change my behavior) tend to bubble up through more specialized news sources (like Ars Technica or my Twitter feed) anyway.

That said, I have found NextDraft (http://nextdraft.com/) very useful.

I've just read "Trust Me, I'm Lying" by Ryan Holliday - a very similar book by the sounds of it, and also one I'd heartily recommend if you want to understand what you're seeing any time you look at Twitter, Facebook, or any mass media.

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