@hutaffe Does RSS appeal to you or do you already use it? I recently committed to it with a smaller number of subscribed sites than I used to check in Twitter, Apple News and Safari, so that I can actually get through them all. I also avoid icon badges, so that there's no pressure to read stuff for the sake of it.
@martinfeld imagine if Photo editing apps used icon badges to show how many you had left to process!
@martinfeld I've made much more use of the RSS feeds that I follow, of late, since weaning myself off of social media. I have been enjoyed the reading as opposed to the sound bites.
@hutaffe A year or so ago I started getting my news through two e-mail newsletters that summarise the day's events. The first is Washington Post's Evening Edition (I'm in Tokyo and it arrives at 6 in the morning) and the other is the Financial Times' FirstFT.
@crossingthethreshold The term ‘sound bites’ is a great way to put it. Back when people only consumed TV and printed news, no one would have thought that brief vox pops and written quotes were enough to communicate a whole story. Now this is what we see on Twitter, albeit in a digital format.
@martinfeld Yeah, I think it probably keeps me a little too engaged but it drastically reduces the amount of time I spend stewing in the news. It's not great for keeping in touch with what's going on in Japan; haven't found a great solution for that.
@pyrmont Do you speak Japanese? (Sorry if I've asked before...) Otherwise, are there any decent English-language sites there?
@martinfeld It's not great but really the problem is it's very difficult to find quality Japanese-language stuff on the web. Japanese publishers have been much more reluctant to simply put their stuff up online and work out the business proposition later (probably a smart move).
For English-language stuff, the FT has a dedicated Tokyo bureau that's probably the best of any Western outlet. The Japan Times used to be all right but were taken over by a right-wing zealot last year that's slowly started to erode the quality of their coverage.
@martinfeld Ah, the 'it' at the beginning of that reply was in reference to my Japanese ability.
I did also forget that Reuters has probably the best Japanese-language news website. The problem with it (unsurprisingly) is that it tends to be very 'of the moment' and lacks deep reporting on events in Japan.
@pyrmont Thank you for explaining all of this in your messages! I find it really interesting to consider media standards and options outside of the West. So much of the content that we consume is US-centric, so when you say that Japan has been reluctant to put stuff up online for nothing, that's fascinating in itself.
@pyrmont Also, I'm sure that your Japanese ability is better than you admit. I hear the same thing from Natasha (my wife) about her Greek-language skills and she grew up speaking it with her family in Australia, even though the dominant language at home was English.
What is really news?
I like that phrasing. I’ve updated my lament on the 24-hour news cycle from this afternoon to link to your post; I was trying to get at the fact that most of what passes for news today is junk, but failed entirely to say it as clearly as you did :-)
@smokey Yeh, “news” is such a subjective thing at the moment. I generally get a good chuckle out of the “trending” news on the https://www.news.com.au website, though it does make me worry a little about our kids future.
@matpacker It feels like maybe 1 out of 10 there is “real news”…. And also this post from @pratik the other day…
@smokey I agree with your take on the news on TV. It‘s not even that there would be a cycle anymore, at least on the web. It‘s just a constant flow of hot takes and headlines. How often is there a headline leading to a post that describes a photo someone posted on Instagram in 500 words? These make me especially angry... how can big (formally) newspaper sites declare it journalism if they interpret Twitter posts on their front page. There is no big picture anywhere and if there is it might fly by with all the other headlines I scroll over. You really have to search for it.
@martinfeld I got back to using it a couple of weeks ago. I almost exclusively get my information through my RSS feeds now. I basically never open Twitter (I have no account anymore) and Apple News is not available for me. The problem is that some sources I think I want to get certain news post a whole bunch of useless stuff. I have so many feeds in there now, I have no pressure at all anymore to read everything. That‘s why I quit RSS before... I had the urge to read everything and the unread count kept getting bigger. The problem now is to find the right balance between the amount of sites I follow and the amount of trash that gets posted.
@pyrmont I often use my eMail inbox as a kind of todo list. Having newsletters in there makes me anxious 😉 I tend to keep them unread for too long. I get a couple of development related newsletters which I can put off to read later though.
@hutaffe You make a great point about the useless stuff. I’ve gone to read things like The New York Times before, as I generally enjoy their long-form style. The problem is that every second thing is about Trump. I prefer to be informed but I don’t need that pushed into my face constantly. Like you said, balance is the key.
@martinfeld I‘m using Feed Wrangler but others probably have the similar features. You can define a smart stream with filters excluding certain keywords. You could get rid of the Trump cesspool that way.
@hutaffe I’ve been trying Inoreader and I’m not sure if the filters are there... something to look into though, so I’ll check! Thanks for the tip!
@kulturnation I feel exactly like this! The important stuff will fly by. For the bigger picture I read Die Zeit and the rest is sports, music and local stuff from my actual hometown plus blogs which I put in my RSS reader. I would miss most of this stuff otherwise.
@hutaffe For the past year or more, the only news I "consume" is via the print versions of the WSJ and NYT newspapers and The Economist (also print). Honestly, for keeping up with what's going on, I've found The Economist to be ideal: "Warm Takes" once a week. The newspapers are good for random non-headline stories without being tempted by other clickbait headlines, videos, or "you might also like..." nonsense.
There is no big picture anywhere and if there is it might fly by with all the other headlines I scroll over. You really have to search for it.
Excellent points!
