Top Five Sources of Information

 My Five Favorite Sources of Information

1. Morning Brew - Email Subscription Letter / Website

 

This is my main source of current events based news stories. The Morning Brew is a subscription based news letter delivered to my inbox every morning. I often start the day by waking up and checking my phone by habit, so having a source of information that keeps a professional, but personable tone helps start my day on the right foot. A lot of their stories are targeted for young professionals, which is helpful as this is almost, but not quite a demographic I fall into, so I am able to familiarize myself with the way in which this news publication applies biases and focuses their interest before being their target audience.  

2. PBSNews Hour - Publicly Funded Cable News 

There are no other cable news networks on my list and that is intentional. I believe that in the capitalist, information driven economy that is America, large scale news networks are obligated to use their platform to sensationalize to maximize views. This is because at the news companies are private corporations with a sole responsibility to increase profits by any means necessary. I am not arguing that there is not a use for that, and I am not saying that Capitalism is bad; I just believe that it would be irresponsible to not be aware of the biases and sensationalism occurring on most large cable news networks. 

However, it has been a long standing tradition that when I am home on a weekday I will watch the PBS News Hour with my mom, and I love my mom. This is not to say I am not aware of the biases of that show, but I am able to find objective reporting in a lot of their stories. Plus, there is an old-school kind of feel to the News Hour that I find nostalgic. As well, due to my previously stated convictions on large corporate news networks, it also helps that PBS is a non-commercial, publicly funded entity which would largely have no real financial benefit from maximizing ratings. 

3. RocaNews - Newsletter / Social Media Outlet

This is one of my new favorite places to find myself reading something interesting that I often would not normally come across. They post twice daily, one post is a general overview of 4 different stories which they explain how to further investigate, and one is often a more in depth, maybe even a repeating story in which they provide insight and objective reporting. The company was founded by journalists who quit their jobs at established media outlets in reaction to the divisive and sensationalized content they observed and created RocaNews. They strive to remain objective and allow for the reader to interpret the information and form their own opinion from the information presented. From their mission statement, "Roca is building the go-to news community around nothing but the facts, because we believe our readers are smart enough to form their own opinions. Too often, news outlets favor negative, partisan, and alarmist news. They profit by pushing political narratives and raising blood pressures."

4. Vox - Website / Social Media Outlet 

I frequently find myself enjoying a lot of content put out by the Vox media Youtube channel. A lot of their reporting can be very well thought out and intentional. This is exactly why I have to be aware when there is bias in some of their editorial content. Through that editorial content though there is often some very solid journalistic storytelling. I enjoy watching a lot of videos when there is a major event related to global affairs, particularly concerning United States involvement. I place them at number four because they can often be a little behind the other outlets that create daily content that is easily digestible. 

5. Wall Street Journal - Newspaper / Website

The Wall Street Journal is the only traditional news company I have listed as it is the source I look to for my most traditional kind of news. This is the news that I enjoy reading, but it is not the stuff that I am fully intrigued by and go around telling everyone about. Economic news, political news, the (not to be boring and for lack of a better word) dry news that does not jump off the page. I look to non-traditional news outlets often times because of this kind of news source and the often bias ridden sensationalist content that can come from it, but I often find that the Wall Street Journal does a good job at controlling the editorial content to not make conclusions for the reader, but to relay objective facts.