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On building a sustainable news-absorption practice
NGL, it still surprises me how most people engage or don’t engage with the news.
Most people I know either actively avoid all news or are hyper keen on just one topic, and usually from a single platform or a particular school of thought.
*Sidebar: Please stop relying on the gram or TikTok for news. I beg you. It is served out of context. It is hyper-biased, emotionally charged, unreliable, cherry-picked, and fed to you through an algorithm that prioritizes disregulating its consumers to keep them engaged and pliable.
Social media is no place for news. Any platform that publishes anything of such citation-void investigation is no place to develop a grasp on anything. Particularly current events. Including our beloved Substack (however, some Substacks are excellent in their research and do provide an array of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. If you have any of those to link to, please share).
There is so much going on, it’s easy to fall into overwhelm and shut it all out. I’ve been there (a few times in my life). I have swung hard in one way and then the other and back again. Reading ALL the news, opening myself up to ALL the shit, getting caught up in efforts to organize for change, and then deciding it is all is just too awful and big and hopeless and then closing myself off to any of it whatsoever.
And that ain’t it.
My heart cringes when I converse with friends and family who are so extremely smart and capable, yet seem to know nothing about what’s going on in the world at all. Or, equally a bummer, have a take that is so clearly derivative of some comedic or irately spewed source.
We can do better, friends.
And not for the sake of saving the globe, but for the sake of being an active part in it.
For the sake of making choices for yourself–on the daily–that are actually in alignment with your goals and spirit and self.
I have found my own ways to sustain my news inputs over the past few years. Though my net does feel like it could use some widening, considering how wide things are these days. I am curious about your sources and habits. If you find them sustainable or are riding the swing of a pendulum?
Please share in the comment section.
And to share my own means of habitualizing a copeable plug into the goings-ons:
In the wee hours of the mornin’, I spend 5 minutes reading The Morning Brew via an email plopped into my inbox circa 6 AM.
As I drive or complete a menial task, I listen to TBOY — a 20-minute podcast by two dudes who started the same podcast through the retail investor app Robinhood years ago. Back then, it was called “Robinhood Snacks.” They ventured out on their own since. Rightfully so, cause they are grrrrr-eat and don’t need a backer. I’ve been a fan since the early days.
And at the end of my day, I consult Ground News. They aggregate stories from 50,000 news sources and present selections with a framework of what biases they are consorting. They are on a mission to give their audience a viewpoint from which they can take in the complete picture. The way they present their aggregated compilations so transparently regarding partisan leanings and original sources is unparalleled. Their daily round-ups, made just for you, come with abstracts of what’s happening and summaries on why it matters. This preliminary work allows you to get right to the meat of things.
& last but not least! Throughout the month, I read our local Community Impact newspaper, which I leave on the dining table to peruse during lunch or snack time. It is super duper to know what is going on locally. To be in relationship with the space that serves as the foundation of my everyday life.
You may have noticed that two of these sources are specifically business and market-related. Why would that be? Well, I have found that business news is the least biased and most integrative source of news. They present facts plainly and draw connections from the forest to the trees, helping audiences use the information to build an informed relationship with their finances.
It isn’t news geared to pluck at a single heartstring. It is purely informative.
I love that. It’s not triggering. It makes sense of how news over here affects news over there, and so on and so forth. It is relevant to me, to my immediate community, to my nation, and to international relations.
After a few years of using these as my own sources, I feel comfy vouching for them.
So, here I go. Ripping this bandaid off (just for you).
My parents were adamant that financial conversation, political conversation, religious conversation, and sex-related conversations were off the table as far as available conversations went in our household.
I used to think it was because they were prude. My brothers and I realized much later that it was so that we could develop our own way of thinking, uninfluenced by our parents.
They were extremely supportive (in a very loving yet silent manner) as we got older and any of our own ways around these things became evident.
Regardless, I still have a habit of either talking very openly about certain things or being quite coy.
I find these ingredients to be important to who I am, but not really labels to express blatantly.
And still, I won’t blatantly express my stance on the news with you, but I will ask that you develop your own manner of staying informed via reliable, transparent sources. Perhaps my recommendations will work for you, or perhaps you have some to share with me.
A hui ho,
Julia
I relate to this a lot. I've had to narrow my input of news - I get the NYT paper on Sunday, and ACLU updates. +1 about your point on business news. I wouldn't say I actively seek out news but since leaving social media (largely) and reading researched long form articles as opposed to short social media blips my critical thinking and self-thinking (as opposed to group-thinking) has improved a lot (what's the source, bias, research validation, etc.) When you have so many sm posts you can't critically evaluate all of them, it is overwhelming. I've heard great things about Ground News though. Trying to stay away from subscriptions, otherwise I'd use it!
Good job Julia, so thanks. I have been considering Ground News since my main man, Randy Rainbow, thinks highly of them as being an excellent unbiased source of information. I used to read The Guardian which does give a fairly clear eyed look at the what the wacky Yanks are up to. Also, Al Jazeera. I read Heather Cox Richardson, Robert Reich, Dan Rather, and Bill Bonner- probably one of the smartest business/financial/investment minds around.