In the last part of this series I talked primarily about the importance and value of the education you can only give yourself - expanding your intellect and abilities beyond the classroom. It’s fairly abstract, so the rest of this series will be about how you educate yourself.
Our post yesterday concerned RSS feeds, and why that is important is that is one of the easiest ways to educate yourself in one of the most fundamental of ways: current events. Now, you can also setup a homepage (as we discussed here) and I think that’s a great idea, too. But I think it’s important to go beyond that as well, and this is where RSS feeds are an improvement. Homepages are pretty easy to ignore, making your news-feeds a daily routine, however, has some value. You can, of course, build this into your homepage (iGoogle, for instance, allows you to embed their newsreader into your page.)
Current events, however, is an absolute cornerstone of being educated. You need to know what’s going on in the world around you. Why? Well, it’s your world. It absolutely does effect you. And what’s more to the point, these issues do come up in “real life” from the classroom to the voting booth. And, to wax political for a moment, democracy only works when the voting populace is educated (and you can see how well that’s working out.)
So, how do we keep up with current events? Well… I don’t know about you, but my faith in television news is pretty much totally shot (and I’m not just talking about Fox here.) The Daily Show is generally a better source of information than they are - which as brilliant as that show often is, still shows a sad state of affairs. The other old-school media sources like radio, newspapers and magazines are also not the most convenient setup for students generally (though I love a nice Sunday copy of the NYTimes!) So we’re left with a couple of options for those of us technologically inclined.
- Websites
- Podcasts
- Newsfeeds
Websites
Most websites that have the sort of content you’re going to want for news are going to have RSS feeds, so I’d suggest you use those. But every once in a while you get a site that has great content but hasn’t quite caught up with the rest of the internet yet. The Atlantic Monthly is a great example. It’s one of my favorite magazines, and one I’ve had a subscription to a number of times. Unfortunately, magazines tend to just pile up unopened so I use it primarily for the online content. A lot of it, however, is available for free to everyone - but they’ve no feed! Never fear, you can use a service like PonyFish to create RSS feeds for sites without RSS feeds to provide you with a steady stream of the Atlantic Monthly. Sure, it’s not as nice as it would be if they actually had one - but it works! I made you one already for those interested.
Generally speaking, however, I don’t know of a lot of websites that can’t be harnessed using RSS. If you know of any other great ones, let me know. But if you want live video coverage, or to pick up clips from a show most the TV news sites offer such things. When I’ve been with a computer and not a TV in some sort of crisis, I usually go to the CNN or MSNBC homepage. You can also pick up clips from the Daily Show and Colbert Report, as well!
Podcasts
I’ve mentioned these a bit before. Podcasts are good for people who have time to listen to them, but I generally don’t. If you do, you can get a list of good ones from the blogroll on this site. OpenCulture also has an extensive list of quality podcasts.
Newsfeeds
This is the bulk of my source of news, and so I generally find it to be the best and most efficient. I can access it anywhere I have internet from phone or computer, and I can spend as little or as much time as I have to go through them.
But what goes there? Well, I’ve compiled a list of Basic News Feeds that constitute the non-specific news feeds I read. By this I mean they are not blogs about technology or education, or what have you. The file links there is an OPML file, which can be imported by any RSS reader worth its salt, but for the sake of completion here’s direct links to the feeds:
- The Atlantic Monthly
- Slate Magazine
- NY Times Homepage
- NY Times > Opinion Page
- Arts and Letters Daily
- Foreign Policy Online
- Guardian Unlimited
Also, for those interested, here’s a link to the various additional feeds the NY Times offers. A few other suggestions I might offer is NPR (they do written news, too and more specific feeds here), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post (a full list of feeds here).
Feel free to add or subtract as you see fit, but this grouping will give you a pretty solid grounding in what’s going on in the world - IF YOU READ THEM. And that doesn’t mean you have to read every article, there will be a lot of repetition - but scan them, read what you can and keep up with the world around you. Personally, I like to scan the news when I first get up - nothing like current events to wake you up, works better than coffee.
What news sources do you like? Any ways you like to get your news that I’ve forgotten? Share in the comments!
26/01/2008 at 4:22 pm Permalink
The New Yorker does not have “news”, per se, but it has very insightful analyses of current events, assuming you already know the facts. I cannot live without it.