Two things about modern-day journalism

Written on 27 March 2024, 09:50pm

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  1. It’s increasingly difficult to get informed, but much easier to be fed narratives
  2. The politicians are not supposed to be the story.

So, while this book is a love letter to the West, this chapter is a plea from the heart to journalists – please stop fucking with the media. It is not yours to co-opt or use to spread propaganda. You are merely stewards of the industry.

Konstantin Kisin: An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West

Notice anything? 
Where’s the policy? Politicians are supposed to be vectors to solve our problems. They’re not supposed to be the story. We are supposed to be the story.

Brian Klaas. The Death of Serious Politics

News fatigue? Switch from push to pull

Written on 20 April 2020, 01:26pm

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Just a quick note about the way we consume information during this time. My approach is to reduce the number of sources pushing information to me, and relying more on the sources where I can pull information myself.

Concretely, I unsubscribed from all the newsletters (even though most of them were pretty good) and I trimmed the list of people I follow on Twitter. At the moment, my sources of information are:

Pull:

  • The Atlantic
  • Wired.com
  • Vox.com
  • Daring Fireball
  • The Guardian
  • statnews.com
  • kottke.org
  • The Athletic

Push:

  • Twitter (90%)
  • Reddit
  • Quora
Pull, not push

PS: a tip for reducing the time spent on Twitter is to save the interesting stories in Pocket. The goal is to read them when I pull them from Pocket, not when they are pushed to me by Twitter.