This, written by Rebecca Solnit, the writer, was on my Facebook page today. I think it's a good list of news sources for today.
--Kim
So! Here are my go-to news sources, since a lot of mainstream media never were very helpful and a lot got worse, and I've been meaning to share recommendations for better sources. You learn in your civics classes (if you ever had them) that we have three branches of government; the news as the Fourth Estate is kind of the fourth branch in good ways, when it holds the first three accountable and contributes to an informed public, and in bad ways when it ignores, normalizes, or misrepresents corruption, lies, and trouble. Which it's done a lot lately, or big legacy media has and right-wing media always did.
Democracy requires an informed and engaged public, which is work that a lot of us can and do do individually, but the corruption and failures of both right-wing and mainstream news media has contributed to the crisis of democracy, and I have to add that a number of left-wing outlets seem to be stuck in old frameworks. So most of us are cobbling together a news diet out of an assortment of stuff.
Staying informed and engaged yourself is part of what you can do to defend democracy; supporting some of these newsletters and magazines below is also part of the work (Silicon Valley has eaten into the advertising income that supported the news industry and cannibalized the product itself). Maybe you want to give some subscriptions for that holiday coming up?
So here's my own news diet and recommendations:
--The Guardian, of course (and yes I write for them; yes I'm proud to do so and yes I go there every day for updates and opinions). Not US-based but more US coverage than all but the biggest newspapers, not afraid to have a solid progressive orientation which means they don't have to pretend there are two sides to stuff like whether women are people who deserve rights.
Longtime Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who was one of the first to raise the alarm about tech-driven election interference in Brexit and the US and beyond, has started a newsletter, but she's also still at the Guardian. Her newsletter: https://broligarchy.substack.com
--The Washington Post (still, and yeah, Bezos quashed their Harris endorsement and sometimes they publish headlines or have coverage almost as horrible as the NY Times, but there's a lot of good, solid coverage of news there; I also check it/read it daily. And yeah, I do go to the NYT periodically because their huge staff includes some superb journalists doing coverage that no one else is, but they're a big part of the problem overall and likely going to get worse, because they never met a power they didn't want to bow before, so I don't read the NYT regularly). Remember that even when you hate management decisions, you might still love some of the good journalists at a newspaper or network. (And remember we mostly don't write our own headlines.)
--@Heather Cox Richardson's Substack newsletter, also available as email to you and posted on her FB page (proud to have started following her right after she started these news/history analysis/summary essays in the fall of 2019; thrilled to see a historian have such impact).
--The New Yorker still has superb reporting on everything from sexual abuse (thank you Ronan Farrow) to Syria to Bill McKibben on climate and some of the best investigative journalists out there (thank you on everything Jane Mayer).
--The New Republic has good politics, good editorials (not that I always agree with any publication) and I really like former NYT columnist Greg Sargent's Daily Blast for podcast political updates https://newrepublic.com/podc.../the-daily-blast-greg-sargent
--Waging Nonviolence is an online newspaper that provides really thoughtful and often soulful takes on political problems and solutions, often centering, yeah, nonviolent activism and organizing strategy: https://wagingnonviolence.org
--Anand Giridharadas writes a Substack newsletter called The.Ink that has thoughtful and insightful political commentary. Like Anand's newsletter, Wajahat Ali's thelefthook.substack.com provides insightful progressive and yes, feminist, political commentary from men inflected by their status as brown sons of South Asian immigrants.
--There are a bunch of media critics online, including Greg Sargent above, Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, Paul Waldman, Mark Jacobs, a former Chicago Tribune editor who has a newsletter, and several others who I found particularly helpful when the press went into its Biden Must Go (but Trump can stay) herd stampede. I follow them mostly on BlueSky (used to on Twitter). Talking Points Memo is also a good progressive political news source/media criticism site.
--Jessica Valenti's Substack newsletter Abortion Every Day provides crucial reproductive rights coverage. Also on Substack, which I do not love as a corporation for various reasons--if you're starting a newsletter, Ghost and other options exist!
--Speaking of which, science fiction writer and trans rights champion Charlie Jane Anders has a non-substack newsletter full of wit and hope and good ideas
--Brian Merchant's Blood in the Machine is a brilliant Substack newsletter focused on tech and its corrosiveness. Brian was at the L.A. Times but got laid off and went independent.
--Here at home Mission Local provides San Francisco news coverage that's reliable, smart, and not kissing up to tech billionaires and the broligarchy.
--On the Media has great radio shows/podcasts talking about how the media failed us/how a story is being presented, week by week. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm
CLIMATE
--Most mainstream sources don't do enough coverage, though some newspapers have good climate journalists. Here climate-specific news sources can be really great, and there are lots of them including:
and of course Bill McKibben's newsletter The Crucial Years, one of three climate newsletters on Substack I'll recommend here; the other two being Emily Atkins's Heated (good overall coverage with a fair amount of fun snark) and David Roberts's Volts, which is primarily a free podcast focusing on renewable energy technology. You can follow almost anything on Substack for free, though I support a handful of writers there with paid subscriptions.
The Rocky Mountain Institute sends out really amazing news/ analysis focused on the renewable revolution. The International Energy Agency does the same. Oil Change International
, on whose board I serve, sends out periodic updates and reports. Any climate organization you join will send news and updates.
In the old days, I followed a lot of climate scientists, journalists, progressive elected politicians (notably AOC), and organizers on Twitter, but I'm off Twitter and slowly rebuilding those sources on BlueSky. It was actually a great place to follow breaking news and discussion of news, including by most of the people mentioned above. BlueSky is coming to be that source for us--had great live reporting on the coup attempt in South Korea and the regime collapse in Syria.
Will add to this as I think of stuff (and no I don't go to all these things every day because there are only 24 hours in a day, but I do go to them all regularly). What's your news diet?
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