I haven’t watched televised news since the first Gulf War. In the last quarter century I bet I haven’t watched a dozen hours of TV news. The closest I’ve come is occassionally tuning into The Daily Show during the Jon Stewart years.
How do I keep up with what’s going on?
Through Google News, RSS feeds, and judicious googling of trending topics.
In Google News I remove any source that pisses me off for inaccuracy. Browsing the headlines, and my ‘free’ allotment of articles gets me pretty far.
What do I pay for?
Washington Post – I have an annual subscription for electronic access. (I have free access to NYT through work, but rarely go beyond my monthly allotment.)
Tom Tomorrow – I shell out money regularly to Tom Tomorrow’s This Modern World because I’ve been enjoying his work for free since the old Processed World days in the 1980s.
Popular Information by Judd Legum – My way of supporting independent journalism.
Wikipedia – I throw them a few bucks every month.
Wonkette – Wonkette shares my undying love for Molly Ivins, and keeps me sane with their righteous anger, irreverent humor, and prodigious cursing. I consider it my daily collection of op-eds. (Arrives via my RSS feeds.)
Entertainment Weekly (which now comes out monthly) – This is an annual gift to my SO, but I read every issue after she does.
Newsletters and RSS feeds
I use Inoreader as my RSS feed reader, and pay $20 a year to bump my feed limit from 150 to 500. (And, also to get rid of ads.)
For news, analysis, and pop culture I subscribe to the feeds of both Vox and AV Club.
I subscribe to The Nib newsletter. It serves as my daily editorial cartoon.
Right Richter keeps me up-to-date on the latest from the right. (Hmm, I didn’t realize he’d moved from TinyLetter to Daily Beast, but that seems to be the case. DB is not typically part of my news round-up.)
I subscribe to a ton of feeds, but some of my favorite are from Colossal (art), Reductress (humor), The Daily Cartoonist (commentary on the types of cartoons that typically appear in newspapers, both daily and editorial).
I also subscribe to a slew of newsletters I rarely open.
And that’s my filter. In the newsletters and RSS feeds I didn’t mention are sources for international news, local news, science, authors/bloggers/artists I follow, some image sources, SF and comics fandom, general weirdness, and some futurists, but that stuff often falls off my radar for weeks at a time. What’s listed above I use several times a week.