Best General News Site

[WanderALot]

As far as websites, I use Yahoo.com and BBC. Listening to NPR rounds out my news fix. Sometimes latimes.com, nytimes,com and the Economist. I do occasionally browse some other countries websites like Sydney Morning Herald (OZ), Aftenposten (Norwegian), Rediff.com (Indian) just to see what on the news there and also to see what they think of us!

I feel like I don't get enough local news, but that would involving watching the local TV newscast ("Top story today, Britney's got a new hairdo!") which I can't bear.

 

[Nords]

Nords, Looks like you've "closed the loop." That's what I call it when you have so many different sites that you regularly check, that by the time you've checked the last one, it's time to check the first again. Very dangerous.

"Whaddya do all day" indeed. I only check once per day, and for the other 23 hours the world has to get along without me...

 

[perinova]

I checked Foxnews, msnbc and cnn yesterday: all three are merely regurgitating, verbatim the exact same associated press news wire.

Over 50% of all news comes directly from reuters, afp and associatedpress. (90% of all international news).

If you watch cable you might get a different slant, grin, frown depending on the news and the atmosphere they want to "portray". That's about it. You probably need to look at much more unusual placees to get a really different news and have a real choice!

 

[Sarah in SC]

I do podcasts on my commute, too. NPR Business Story of the Day, NPR Story of the Day, WSJ What's News, WSJ Your Money Matters, and the Onion. That covers just about all I need to know!

Today's Onion: 91-yr-old woman an expert at outliving
Last week: Pizza Hut's new pizza-lover's pizza topped with smaller pizzas

Sarah

 

[TromboneAl]

What I want from a new site:

1. Minimal ads

2. No animation or scrolling text

3. Simple, clean, readable layout with compactly organized headline so that I don't have to scroll far. For example, today I can see 19 headlines on MSNBC without scrolling, but only about 5 on nytimes.com or foxnews.com. CNN has about 19, but 9 of them are video or live feeds (fee service).

4. Quick summary of the main points of the story. CNN is the only one that seems to have this. Often the headline will read "Oral Sex Causes Cancer," and the story will start out "Bob and Susan Crane of Oshkosh, Wisconsin have lived on their tree-lined street for 25 years." That tells me I'm going to have to read half the article to get to the meat of the story.

 

[perinova]

I checked Foxnews, msnbc and cnn yesterday: all three are merely regurgitating, verbatim the exact same associated press news wire.

Over 50% of all news comes directly from reuters, afp and associatedpress. (90% of all international news).

If you watch cable you might get a different slant, grin, frown depending on the news and the atmosphere they want to "portray". That's about it. You probably need to look at much more unusual placees to get a really different news and have a real choice!

interesting article here exactly on this subject:
http://www.newswatch.in/?p=5728

Here is a good quote coming at the end

For the major original news content providers online, the figure has risen from 34 per cent dependence to 50 per cent dependence in five years. It is especially noteworthy that the major US sites, CNN, MSNBC, and ABC, are doing substantially less original international journalism than they were five years ago. The New York Times seems to be doing more. BBC Online continues to exhibit little verbatim use of news agencies, and stories generally appear to draw from a wider range if sources than the American services. Sky appears to draw just from news agencies, but their text has been extensively reworded in Sky’s concise house style.

With international news online consisting mainly of stories from the wire services, Paterson predicts that the online news industry will use cosmetic changes such as minor editorial adjustments and the addition of further bells and whistles at news sites to distract readers and disguise its dependence on such limited resources.

It seems a good idea to look at the nyt.com and bbc.com as good alternative source of information online.

 

[F-One]

TromboneAl

I know you mentioned you liked BBC but didn't like the scroll.

Try this:

Using Firefox, download Add-on "No Scripts". This stops scroll text on BBC News website

 

[Elderdude]

I read the Sacramento Bee for my daily input of news. I just can't get used to trying to separate the crap from the crepes on-line. Fox news?
I'd trust Jon Stewart before Fox News for accuracy. Is Fox news on-line any different from their cable network?

 

[califdreamer]

I caught an interview on the radio today with a guy who has a website called congoo.com. It allows you to customize your own news site, probably other places to do this.

The thing that intrigued me was the feature that allows you to access journals and sites that normally require a paid subscription. He may have mentioned the Wall Street Journal as an example. I've tried to go onto sites for health-related studies (Lancet, New England JOM, others) but you've got to subscribe to get to the studies. Let's say you wanted to find out what the studies say about eating garlic to lower cholesterol. It's annoying to have to subscribe to a journal just to read an article you want to access one time.

In order to take advantage of the access to journals you have to download some kind of software or something so I was wary of moving forward. Anyone else have experience with congoo?

 

[BigMoneyJim]

What I want from a new site:

1. Minimal ads

2. No animation or scrolling text

3. Simple, clean, readable layout with compactly organized headline so that I don't have to scroll far. For example, today I can see 19 headlines on MSNBC without scrolling, but only about 5 on nytimes.com or foxnews.com. CNN has about 19, but 9 of them are video or live feeds (fee service).

4. Quick summary of the main points of the story. CNN is the only one that seems to have this. Often the headline will read "Oral Sex Causes Cancer," and the story will start out "Bob and Susan Crane of Oshkosh, Wisconsin have lived on their tree-lined street for 25 years." That tells me I'm going to have to read half the article to get to the meat of the story.

Have you considered using an RSS reader? Maybe a standalone reader or use something like Bloglines, My Yahoo, My MSN or Google Reader and add the feeds to your configurable page.

You can also use Google for news and/or RSS headline feeds.