Multi-source journalism subscriptions? Also, seeking recommendations for sources.
Every few months I get the itch to support journalism and expand my news from the low quality high fluff news sources that tend to be free and subscribe to some long-form sources of news, opinion, and investigative journalism, but every time I go through the same process of pricing subscriptions, struggling to decide which one, and then finally just giving up and not subscribing to any of them.
If money was no object I'd probably subscribe right now to:
- The Atlantic
- The New Yorker
- Harpers
- The Economist
- National Review
- WSJ
- NYT
(trying to focus on a variety of political leanings, but mostly from generally high-factuality sources)
I like Apple News+ in concept, and the price is decent, but after a trial subscription I felt like the UI was difficult to navigate, difficult to search and filter, and the news sources were still a subset of the entire publications. I also have to wonder whether the journalists are sufficiently compensated by Apple or whether they get pennies compared to a direct subscription.
So, I come here seeking recommendations -- perhaps somebody here has found a good solution to this problem?
My friend, you are describing your local library. Not only do they have newspapers you can read in person, but many offer digital versions (through Gale, e.g.) that you can read from home. News magazines are even more widely available.
For sources, it depends on what you're most interested in. Global news: The NY times, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, and the Christian Science Monitor (don't let the Christian Science affiliation scare you off -- it's one of the few papers that maintains its own foreign desks, and the reporting quality is excellent).
If you like reading culture war stuff then The Atlantic is your jam, I guess.
I agree, and do use my local library a lot for digital stuff, but it's out of the way for me (~40 minutes round trip by car) in a direction that I never go so I seldom actually go in. The neighboring city's library would actually be more convenient for me, but it's only available to residents of the city.
Does your library have any digital resources? You may be surprised with how many resources even small libraries have available via apps like Overdrive, Libby, Gale, etc.
I guess you missed my first sentence. :)
They do, but for the current topical stuff not so much, and what they do have is hard to get while it's still relevant since so many are looking for it.
I subscribe to The Guardian myself, my wife gets Financial Times through work. So I get a balance there.
I also subscribe to NewScienist, that gives me a dose of scientific waffle on a weekly basis.
Realistically, your news input shouldn't be a huge portion of your day (unless work revolves around it), so aim for a balance of what you can read and how often. If you want to read for entertainment and interest beyond news? Then it helps to branch away from many news outlets these days (though many do have long form goodness!)
I found a deal on the Washington Post so I took it. Otherwise, my feedly is full of free options. Whenever I find an interesting article from a free source I add that source to the mix. The Atlantic is one I frequently want to use though. Also the NY Times.
Calculated Risk blog is a free source for some economic news.
I used to be an avid reader 10 years ago and gave up haha. For me, my ideal roster, given infinite time and money, would be:
Then, assorted blogs from journalists and other entities. (Matt Taibbi and NakedCapitalism come to mind for me, though my RSS has more.)
At least historically, Reuters, Bloomberg, and AP generally do a lot of the close-to-factual reporting, which gets repackaged upstream for newsrooms like NYT who might not have boots on the ground for a specific piece. (In the last 10 years, I feel like they have started to publish more opinionated news as well. Of course, all news-- including the driest news-- has a bias.) I like FT and Bloomberg also because I tend to believe finance is an accurate reflection of priorities and concerns in a capitalism system.
I would have recommended Longform.org + Apple News to you, but Longform.org is now only a podcast. It now seems to be an interview of different journalists?
Was the AI news summarizer newsminimalist.com?
It was! Thanks for reminding me.
I really miss the old longform.org. I found so many good articles there back when they used to have curated links!
If you want to support great journalism: ProPublica.
Thanks for the reminder, I added them to my RSS reader.
You'll probably also like Bellingcat, then.
Didn't know about Bellingcat, but after checking them out, Im impressed by the research they do, it's great.
Yeah, they're possibly the highest quality you can find and do the most intensive research. The geolocation they do in some stories is incredible and they do incredibly deep dives into a lot of topics.
I'm seeing a lot of US based sources here, and while they are all super relevant and so far, seem to be objective and trustworthy, I've found that using some of the publicly funded sources can be really good as well. I like to cross reference between PBS, CBC and BBC when I can, as a foreign perspective on a local issue can provide some much needed perspective.
I'm currently subscribed to Washington Post and the New York Times. I was ready to cancel both this year, but as I was in the process of, they both gave me some good deals to stick around for at least another year.
The one I really want to subscribe to is The Economist. People have mentioned using the public library subscription, but I can only get the Economist' digital "physical" version of the magazine. Which I find super annoying to read on a screen, especially something like a phone.
The Guardian is an excellent free paper
https://www.theguardian.com/us
that is certainly UK-focused but has a lot of readers in the US. I recently found EL PAÍS
https://english.elpais.com/
which my RSS reader and I enjoy.