What's the best place to get news now?

I got a lot of my headlines from reddit. Due to the impending death of my favorite app (Sync for Reddit) however, that's coming to an end.

I'm now realising my Reddit experience had deteriorated slowly, just doomscrolling the hours away wasn't healthy and I'm even kind of glad this is a good reason to end it. However, reddit has been really useful for news, especially the comments (taken with the right amount of skepticism) could be very informative.

I hope Lemmy builds something similar, but the defederation of beehaw's news has been a setback.

What would be a good alternative, going forward, for getting news and backgrounds from varied, trustworthy en unbiased sources?

ramesdunc, (edited )

I like brutalist.report.

It shows the headlines of many news sites in a clean way: just text links. It also has filters for tech, science, politics, etc.

Edit:typo

DrownedAxolotl,

If you're willing to make a new account, I use lemmy.ml and so far I've been able to connect to every major instance including beehaw. Or you could make a separate beehaw account just for their content.

CeruleanRuin,

The context I got from reddit comment threads was invaluable. I hope to find something similar in the federated wilderness.

HelixNebula,

Reuters and the Associated Press are probably the most neutral and trustworthy news agencies.

Edit: My bad, they aren't news aggregators, I still highly recommend them, though.

Emberleaf,
@Emberleaf@lemmy.ml avatar

I just discovered <a href="">https://newsnotfound.com/</a> and I quite like it! Well worth checking out. :)

FrankTheHealer,

RSS feeds from PBS and NPR

limeaide,

What XML link do you use for them?

FrankTheHealer,

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/headlines

http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1001

limeaide,

Thank you!

FrankTheHealer,

No problemo

Soullioness,
@Soullioness@lemmy.world avatar

As someone that's never used RSS, how does it work?

Soki,

You install an RSS reader app on your phone or computer and subscribe to the feed links. Those contain some metadata for each story and a link to the content. The RSS reader will display everything in a readable way.

_finger_,

Is there an RSS reader with built in comment sections?

OFS_Razgriz,

Both of them have truly neutral coverage, as in they report based on fact and reality and don't limit what they write in order to maintain some false sense of neutrality. Many news sites nowadays play down objective fact in order to maintain "neutrality" between one side of the political spectrum that believes in evidence and statistical fact and one that expressly does not.

This of course means that they're seen as being "anti-Trump" or "anti-Republican" but in actuality it's reality itself that is anti-Trump and they just report reality.

14specks,
@14specks@lemmy.ml avatar

I would caution against putting so much faith in them both so strongly. They both favor American establishment liberal politics, which is transparent to many due to the fact that a lot of Americans agree with those politics, and that they appear very reasonable in comparison to whatever tf Republicans are up to on a given day.

It's not a bad thing that they tend to have a very dry and straightforward tone, but all outlets are biased, and it's important to remain critical at all times if you want to have an accurate picture of a current event.

OFS_Razgriz,

Oh fully agree, of course. Every once in a while I see a neoliberal dipshit in their opinion columns making some abhorrent take, but generally they're signs significantly better than WaPo, NYT, CNN, Fox, CNBC, NBC, or CBS.

Some other good ones are Reuters, Al Jazeera, and the Associated Press, which of course each come with their own set of biases as well. Reuters is also fairly establishment liberal, Al Jazeera is useless for any news about the Middle East, and AP's opinion and analysis columns lean pretty conservative.

My comment was more in the sense that a "neutral" news site is one where they do not suppress facts because those facts favor a perceived "side" of a debate, which is becoming increasingly common as major political parties in the US and abroad start pushing outright falsehoods in their rhetoric.

14specks,
@14specks@lemmy.ml avatar

Fair enough, that's actually close to the mix I have in my RSS reader, although I also would add the SCMP and teleSur as well

OFS_Razgriz,

I'll take a look at those! I should really consider setting up an RSS feed for news coverage. Kinda been meaning to for a while, do you have an RSS reader that you prefer?

14specks,
@14specks@lemmy.ml avatar

Liferea works well for me, but if you aren't using Linux then we can all long for Google Reader to come back lol. https://miniflux.app/ also looks good but takes some setting up it looks like.

Also be aware in advance that teleSur is Cuban/Venezuelan/Bolivian state media, but it sounds like you have decent enough media criticism skills to appreciate their point of view in comparison to the US-based outlets.

MeowKittyWow,
MeowKittyWow avatar

Very interested in others folks answers. Honestly, I follow a lot of people on Mastodon who share news. I also follow hashtags for my local area (and here on threadiverse, subscribed to communities focused on my local area). This seems to work okay but isn't quite the firehouse I'm used to.

redditblackoutkekw,

Aljazeera is fantastic, I've been reading them for years and years. Their middle eastern news tends to be biased, but everything else is good. Of course, never trust a single news source on anything

krash,

I find Aljazeera as biased as fox news can be. Aljazeera is a impressive news network, but I would absolutely not recommend them as a news source.

sphere_au,

For tech news, you can try techmeme.com, Hacker News and ycombinator. For general world news, I'm subscribed to TLDR News on Nebula and also check some local outlets websites directly. A few offer RSS which can be useful though that will vary by location.

Kodachrome,
Kodachrome avatar

Hacker News has long been one of my main news sources. The majority of postings are tech-related but there's a lot of more general content and the moderation is very good. https://news.ycombinator.com/ . I generally use Feedly to browse it.

For excellent, in-depth analysis of world events/politics/economics there's the UK-based publication The Economist - https://www.economist.com/ - which is a paid service (expensive!) but has a lot of free content on the site, esp. if you're signed-up, even as a free user. It's not an aggregator though - more like a better NY Times without all the stupid fluff.

lemmyvore, (edited )

Harmonic is a nice HackerNews app for those who’d like one.

nivenkos,

I think it's best to never read the news, you'll find about stuff that actually affects you naturally anyway.

Focus on communities for your hobbies and career instead.

Balssh,
Balssh avatar

I’d argue that one should not stop reading the news forever because you’ll just become increasingly disconnected from what happens around you. As with all things, reading news in moderation and not doomscrolling is the way I think.

nivenkos,

But you naturally will hear about important stuff anyway or see it on headlines in the supermarket, etc.

Like when the Ukraine war started, the Ukrainians and Russians had a flame-war on the company slack.

And if we really were going to die by climate disaster, nuclear war, pandemics, etc. isn't it better not to know until it happens anyway?

You can't spend your life worrying about things that will materialise decades from now, or are going on thousands of miles away. Focus on your own life and your own family and community.

Balssh,
Balssh avatar

I think Kbin replies are broken because I had to go to your profile to see your reply to me.
Anyways, I don't think being reasonable up to date with whatever happens in your country or in the world means "worrying about things that will materialize decades from now or are going on thousands of miles away".
For example, not watching news at all (I usually never use the TV nowadays) might make me miss some bad legislation that was/will be passed. I might miss protests against such things. Or I might be more prone to believing fake news about a certain topic (war in Ukraine for example).
But I completely agree one should not be 24/7 worrying about news.

nivenkos,

But the protests make no difference anyway so why bother?

And why does your opinion on Ukraine matter, are you an admiral or field marshal? Can you change anything anyway?

Better to spend that time learning new songs on guitar, playing new video games, discovering new movies, or areas to go hiking, cities to go travelling, cooking and restaurants, etc. - actually enjoy life. It is short.

Balssh,
Balssh avatar

I beg to differ, protests matter. At least here (Romania) they made those in power revert some bad legislation after seeing massive protests. Don't mean to insult or anything, but this apathic approach towards civil society is a big factor in eroding democracy.
Again, if enough people think a certain narrative then it will affect the events.
You can both have a decent awareness of things around you and enjoy life to its fullest in my opinion.

iwan2c,

Noi si francezii ce le avem cu protestele

Rian,

Yeah agreed. I think limiting it - great, yes, 100% do that. I tend to look through important news things on Sundays (usually via scrolling through a few sites - SBS, BBC, Al Jazeera, and then doing a bit more research about topics that interest me), and then not really engaging outside of then.

I'm not into ignoring the news and figuring that important things will naturally come through to me, both because there are important things that happen which won't necessarily come up in regular conversation, and also because people - no matter how much I trust them - are going to give their own spin on things. So you both risk missing out on important news, and gaining important news through a skewed lens.

(I don't mean to imply that the media doesn't skew the lens of news, which is why I visit a few different sites.)

Balssh,
Balssh avatar

Absolutely agree with your approach. Also not being aware about news at all might make those in power get away with passing nocive legislation without much resistance from the population.

lotanis,

I like to keep up to date enough on the things my government chooses to do so that I can make an informed choice the next time I vote.

lz0,
lz0 avatar

I very actively followed news and politics a couple of years ago, and had been doing that for a long time. One day I just got completely fed up, and stopped. And holy shit, I've been so much happier and harmonious since then. Strongly recommend, 5/7

god,
@god@sh.itjust.works avatar

go to ground.news, they have news from both sides of the spectrum and label them as such and it's kind of like a reddit for news?? world news specifically tho

Xeelee,
Xeelee avatar

While i like the idea on principle, I think they have a lot of bothsideism on their site. Dividing everything into "left" or "right" is not a really valid approach.

god,
@god@sh.itjust.works avatar

That's such a leftrightcenterupdownist perspective. Shoulda known better than to cheat a friend and waste the chance that I've been given. So I'm never gonna dance again the way I danced with youuu oh oh.

Now tbh I don't read ground news. I have a friend who does. I don't care about news. I dislike reading about world drama. It's tiring and unnecessary. Life goes on all the same. News are coarse and get everywhere. Not like here. Here everything is soft and smooth.

khaleesa,
khaleesa avatar

I need to find a new way to scroll through random news as well, I used to like browsing world news and other random threads that hit the front page. Feed readers sound like something I should look into.

lotanis,

I've started using newsminimalist.com It's one of the most useful LLM based services I've seen. It's an aggregator that uses ChatGPT to identify the significance of stories and group the articles on different sites about that story together and then summarise them.

I don't want to spend hours every day reading news, but I do want to keep up to date with major events and it's been good for that.

Anahkiasen,
@Anahkiasen@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Wow this is pretty neat, have you encountered often that it hallucinates news and such?

lotanis,

No, because the primary purpose of the LLM is to choose among news stories on existing news sites and just group them together put them in order - not so much opportunity to make stuff up.

It's also doing summarisation, but that is something LLMs do pretty well and in that constrained way also don't hallucinate much (in my experience).

I_Miss_Daniel,
I_Miss_Daniel avatar

Google News app, Whirlpool forums and Facebook. Reddit until recently.

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