So where do you get your news from? Over the past few years television news has undeniably gone to crap. When the Laci Peterson story leads on all the major news outlets, less than a week after a war ended and the fate of a powder-keg like region lies in the balance, I know the TV news has gone to crap. Fox News is the best indicator of that. My family, like many families I assume, stopped getting the news paper at home. I suppose the radio isn't as terrible as TV, but it's still Ameri-filtered. (and I'm ignoring the talk shows, just talking about straight news). So of course where am I leading? The internet.
The major news portals that pop to mind are cnn.com and abcnews.com. While they are surely better than TV or better than Fox News's website, they are still far too Americentric to get a good idea of what's really going on in the world. And if you don't think what's going on outside the US is important, just stop reading now. So let's push those to the side for now. If you are like me, then you skim headlines and pop in on stories that interest you. The right sidebar on Yahoo! was my staple for a long time. I got a mix of headlines, usually from AP or Reuters. This was pretty good for me, and I used that method of getting news for a long time...until I found Google News.
Ideally you shouldn't stick to one source for your news, but if you do, Google News is the way to go. It's an index of 4500 or so news sources, worldwide. It doesn't actually have any stories - only links to news sources. The headlines are categorized and chosen by some sort of proprietary computerized ranking. I know that sounds fishy, but it does a really good job. For example, at this moment, there isn't a headline involving Laci Peterson. The page is cleanly laid out, it doesn't eat bandwidth, and there are no ads. So go check it out!
What scares me is that Google is so awesome that now I depend on it even more. As long as they stay a private company, then maybe their morals will hold them afloat in a sea of bastard capitalism.
Posted by ramk at April 23, 2003 12:53 AMI have to say that I agree with your opinion on Google news. I just checked it out and really like it. Hell of a lot more diversity in the stories there.
Posted by: Gabe at April 27, 2003 04:00 PM