The idea behind the more general movement of slow news is

1. Given time to read and write proper investigative journalism, one doesn't have to resort to copy-pasting descriptive "news" from wire organisations.

2. With hindsight, it is easier to pick out which stories turned out to be significant, and which did not.

3. By revisiting past events, one can begin to unwind what greater consequences they had.

Essentially, slow news is a way to better understand what matters in the world. It won't let you talk about the latest soap opera star in the breakroom, but that's not news anyway, in my opinion.

I'm not sure the author agrees with this, but it's an attempt at answering your question about the value of slower news.

Quality journalism that takes a month to unpack requires journalism done by the greatest writers, someone who can pack a lot of information into a very small amount of content.

An article (from OP's website) titled 'Poor kids need summer jobs, Rich kids get them' is interesting for a moment to the majority of readers and few readers who have kids looking for summer jobs will find relevant information in the article. The article mentions Brexit and UBI which are inevitably going to age. A month or years after release I would find better information in books on the topic or ongoing conversations with people following the topic.

Hindsight is easier on a target that stands still and less interesting too. We can unveil the significance of long running stories in the stream of consciousness format on HN or Reddit by revisiting stories that are repeatedly relevant.

When I want information that transcends time I go to philosophers, intellectuals, scientists, professionals in the field that have written years of accumulated knowledge into a book. I don't see what a news article seeks to provide that will age well. It's not aiming at creating information that ages well.

During a subsequent visit, however, Chang told him that there were other books published up to about the middle of 1930 which would doubtless be added to the shelves eventually; they had already arrived at the lamasery. “We keep ourselves fairly up-to-date, you see,” he commented. “There are people who would hardly agree with you,” replied Conway with a smile. “Quite a lot of things have happened in the world since last year, you know.” “Nothing of importance, my dear sir, that could not have been foreseen in 1920, or that will not be better understood in 1940.

— James Hilton, Lost Horizon

It's a good quote and I don't see it's application. The idea is virtuous, this execution does not live up to it or hit the same mark as what Hilton was talking about.

A good book can last decades or centuries, a news article rarely (if ever at all) has the content to do that.

I think that’s the point, in part—most news is just noise. If it’s irrelevant in a week or a month, maybe it never was relevant in the first place. Weather and traffic reports aside, I guess.

> Giving me (the user) the ability to sculpt my own mirror or museum for the world's news with powerful categories might be more helpful.

Ultimately you can. I only curate 2 pages (main one and one about Portugal[0]) but I accept pull requests creating/updating other specific pages - if you are really interested and will handle the burden of building them directly in HTML. For now that's my filter to accept them.

[0] https://www.slowernews.com/portugal