Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

Re:Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed by michaelmdresser on Thursday February 06, 2025 @11:14AM (#42963811)

I’ve been sticking to the weekly edition of The Economist for years to stay informed while escaping the news cycle. The US coverage is remarkably good. The weekly cadence mean I’m often a week behind the news, but to me that’s a feature. The editorial pieces (those expressing “the opinion of the newspaper”) are kept separate as “Leaders” and I read them last, if it all; I usually read each issue back-to-front following a tip from HN years ago.

For US-interested people, I’d also like to recommend Checks and Balance, a podcast by some of The Economist’s US reporters.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed by slantedview on Thursday February 06, 2025 @11:51AM (#42964187)

The Economist is not exactly a neutral source of information, and is very much pro-big business, which has caused it to take horrible positions on many important issues throughout its long history, such as overthrowing democratic governments, supporting dictatorships, etc.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed by glaugh on Thursday February 06, 2025 @06:17PM (#42967475)

I’d say it’s pro economic development. Like they express concerns around the decline of anti-trust enforcement.

I’m sure it’s true that they used to advocate dictators, but in the 30 years of reading it as my primary news source, they’ve always seemed to me to be very consistently on the side of liberalism (in the older sense of the word) and very concerned about democracy

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed by Bhilai on Thursday February 06, 2025 @11:26AM (#42963950)

I liked content from The Economist in the past but thought of them as more focused on the world affairs. Will try them out for sure.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed by NickC25 on Thursday February 06, 2025 @11:35AM (#42964040)

I too enjoyed The Economist's reporting on foreign affairs and world news.

I found their editorials to be completely wacky and out of touch.

Same could be said for the WSJ.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed by mncharity on Friday February 07, 2025 @01:03AM (#42969898)

I years ago read The Economist, and found a characterization of "Fleet Street cocktail party" useful for anticipating distributions of expertise and dysfunction across topics.

I've not read it regularly, but some suggest the Financial Times.[1][2]

The NYT... sigh. "All the foreign bureaus have closed" (geographic and topical; so superficial, confused, and pre-framed); and "correctness is a local property attained by wordsmithing" - an apparent belief that bad reporting can be "fixed" by local tweaks, so sentences in isolation aren't utterly wrong, even if most readers without overriding expertise will still be left badly misled. After all, it's "news" not analysis. My daily reminder that "Journalism hasn't yet had the 'we suck at this' epiphany which sets up a field's many-decade struggle towards high reliability organization" - we know what a safety/reliability culture looks like, and journalism very isn't it.

[1] https://www.cjr.org/special_report/why-the-left-cant-stand-t... [2] https://www.ft.com/ https://news.google.com/search?q=financial%20times&hl=en-US&...

[ Parent | on HN ]