I've been saying this for a while now. We should abolish this weird cultural tradition/expectation/normalization of continuous "news" consumption and replace it with periodical consumption of in-depth reporting on trends, like you said.

People believe following the news keeps them informed even though the news distors their world view because it mostly reports on exceptions to the rule (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog). "Following the trends" would keep people actually informed as well as provide them with actionable information.