The premise is wrong. It’s less about news than your phone.
Before, news was timeboxed. You might have a daily paper habit, or listened to the radio in the car on a commute, or a nightly broadcast, and a handful of longer term magazines, but that was it. It may capture your attention for a bit but there wasn’t any more of it to obsess compulsively.
24/7 cable broke this contract, but let’s be honest, that’s really not something normal people stare at all day.
What’s really new is the constantly updating infinite feed, be it HN or Facebook. (Refreshing the front page of NYT or the BBC doesn’t have enough churn to creative this effect.) Oh, and we took that and we put it in your pocket.
So that’s not great, and it definitely doesn’t need to be in your pocket.
I’m still experimenting with this, but the best change has been to unfollow every news site on social media (the algorithm is a terrible editor) and sign up for a few email newsletters instead. They’re finite, and the good ones are curated by real people.
These days I'm really liking NPR's daily newsletter, which is a straightforward, no nonsense "here's what we think is important" report. And I'm a huge fan of NextDraft.
But at this point any writer or publication you like to read probably has one.
Before, news was timeboxed. You might have a daily paper habit, or listened to the radio in the car on a commute, or a nightly broadcast, and a handful of longer term magazines, but that was it. It may capture your attention for a bit but there wasn’t any more of it to obsess compulsively.
24/7 cable broke this contract, but let’s be honest, that’s really not something normal people stare at all day.
What’s really new is the constantly updating infinite feed, be it HN or Facebook. (Refreshing the front page of NYT or the BBC doesn’t have enough churn to creative this effect.) Oh, and we took that and we put it in your pocket.
So that’s not great, and it definitely doesn’t need to be in your pocket.
I’m still experimenting with this, but the best change has been to unfollow every news site on social media (the algorithm is a terrible editor) and sign up for a few email newsletters instead. They’re finite, and the good ones are curated by real people.