Let’s assume the thesis is my on-the-wagon, off-again status as a recovering news junkie.
Then “No News is Good News” is my posited antithesis.
While going cold turkey into news sobriety has not yet worked for me, I’m sticking with the title (for now)
These represent my early attempts of a synthesis: an uneasy, tentative peace. To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau (in Civil Disobedience) if “I ask for, not at once no news, but at once better news.”
I noticed I consume most news when I don't know what to work on. It allows me to hit the snooze button on making a decision: alleviates the tension—and that easy out gets addictive.
So, instead, I try to snooze news: I send / delegate it to a future me: that could mean weeks, days, hours, or , I found, even minutes later, it seems helps with that anxiety. I hit a snooze button browser extension, or another extension to send to Pocket, which is installed on my e-ink eReader.
These are some tools that help deliver better news:
What I’d like to see (pls, steal my idea!):
AI-powered app / service that tracks what headlines you’re viewing / considering reading the article, and promises to have ready for you in some hours or days a synthesis with the deeper why. this combines the snooze factor + contextualization.
Journalists like to say they write the first draft of history. Likewise consumers should get some on that context