Better-informed implies useful knowledge. Stop with the news for a month and you'll realize that 98% of it doesn't provide you with any information that stays with you for more than a day or so. It doesn't matter that you read it. It only has negative effects on you.

This opens up a lot more time and effort to explore the 2% that does matter.

One way that I could imagine is having long-form discussions about it with friends rather than getting a journalist’s opinion and settling on it as fact.

But then you just had a discussion about your friends understanding of the issue, which is going to be another step removed from the journalist. And you're either relying on the friend to have done all the work for you, or you're just two people who haven't taken the time to look at the issue discussing it.

To me, it seems that was lies strong opinions and without context.

There’s the rub. Your friend is more likely to have a similar point of view as you on a given topic so they can relay the necessary details for you, if the topic is important enough. No matter the topic, there will always be multiple spins on it so getting your friend’s spin is no better or worse than a journalist’s — or worse, the mob’s.

I would argue the friends spin is probably more reliable, depending on the friend of course, as at least they would not be motivated by ratings or money and probably are not intentionally trying to cultivate any certain biased viewpoint in you.

Books

Well, I'm guessing this whole conversation them hinges on what we mean by "informed."

I'm doubting that a person could be well-informed by what's going on recently with the Trump adminstration, or BLM protests, or recent Covid news, from reading books alone.

I'm guessing that people who don't read the news might respond that the latest scandal from the government isn't important, and why they stopped reading the news.

At which point, "informed" might simply mean "the things I know about, because I think they're important."