Fun Friday: Where Do You Get Your News?

We are treading quite close to real work on this fun friday topic, but it will be good fun anyway.

I haven't read a newspaper in at least a decade. We still get one delivered to our home and the Gotham Gal reads it religiously. She also is a crossword addict so that may play a part in her loyalty to paper, ink stains, and the morning read.

But I do read news pretty much non stop throughout the day. Most of my news comes from Twitter. After that, I like vertical news aggregators. Real Clear Politics for political stuff. Hacker News for tech stuff. ESPN for sports. Techmeme for tech business. Linkfest for business/stock news.

I don't use any sort of RSS reader or tool to read news. I just read it all day on the web, on my phone, and on my iPad. I have bookmarked these sites and I just visit them and read, click, read, follow, read, and I go wherever the web takes me.

How about you?

#Web/Tech

Comments (Archived):

  1. Carl Rahn Griffith

    Twitter, definitely, is my primary source. I have a business/tech ID and a social ID and flip between the two depending on time of day/mood/mode to see what’s happening. I often use RTs as a way of Bookmarking something for me to read later in day. I go to very few ‘landing page’ web sites nowadays for news, other than The Economist.Understand GG and her love of traditional ink-papers – I used to love them and consume them avidly, especially the fat weekend ones (loved that when living in NYC/London, taking weekend papers to a cafe for a long, slow, read). Ironically, since we moved a couple of years ago and no longer have an open ‘real’ fire, I stopped buying them – I justified them because they also came in jolly useful to help light the fire!Oh, and I still use my old startup, http://www.ensembli.com 😉

    1. William Mougayar

      I didn’t know you started Ensembli. I have tested it.

      1. Carl Rahn Griffith

        Cool. It’s a long story… 😉

  2. William Mougayar

    How about from emails that people send you? You said before that news will find you.Getting news from each other is probably still a large component for most of us.

    1. awaldstein

      News finds me for certain.I can’t avoid it.

  3. Vineeth Kariappa

    techcrunch, mashable, reuters, bloomberg, avc. Don’t u think “the news” is dead? All the sites you mentioned do carry a lot of opinions.

    1. fredwilson

      News is commodity. Opinion will never be.

      1. JamesHRH

        Opinion is a commodity. Analysis never will be.David Gergen v anyone on FOX

        1. JLM

          Opinion and analysis has become so polarized as to be perfectly predictable and irrelevant.The polarization of opinion and the wholesale manufacturing of “facts” has become so widespread as to question whether any of these pundits actually have a functioning brain.I am so tired of reading articles about unemployment which focus exclusively on BLS.GOV U-3 and ignore U-6 and having “news” headlines lauding and/or decrying the implications of the same facts that I want to puke.There is no more truth in journalism today. It is all spin. And not very good.

        2. testtest

          imo, analysis is only opinion. i like analysing the analysis. finding the holes. taking analysis at face value has no value. being contrarian and right has value; it can provide an edge

          1. fredwilson

            I agree Chris

          2. JamesHRH

            @fredwilson:disqus analysis is stating the grounds for your opinion. Opinion used to require analysis – now it is mostly yelling something that supports your agenda.Is Keith Olbermann analysis? Is Sean Hannity? Its enterpinion.Analysis does not load a predetermined outcome.IMO.

          3. Emily Merkle

             meta-analysis

      2. Michael Shafrir

        I like to think of this as the dichotomy between information and knowledge.

  4. John Best

    *work related post warning*We’ve spoken about this before Fred, and I have skin in the game. For me (and my nascent product) everything is news to someone. Why should we as consumers have to read news written for someone else at this point of social and technological development?For me, the best news source balances what you always want to know about, and information you wouldn’t have known about, but would be interested in.*end of work related post*Personally, I still enjoy taking a pause to watch the news on television.  

  5. JimHirshfield

    News.me, Flipboard, Techmeme, hacker news, NPR, linkedin and Twitter feeds.My kids. Everything they say is news.

    1. Rohan

      Funny guy, you are.. hmmm.. yes.

    2. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

      That is poetic. Yes. The way they put it across … it is a damn interesting news.

  6. RichardF

    I have feedly set up to bring in my rss feeds from google  reader. I like venturebeat and GigaOm for tech.I love my feedly set up, I have had it set up for a while now and occasionally tweak it for new sources and cull ones that I don’t use anymore. Since I have had feedly on my tablet it’s like having a fully configured personalised newspaper.I dip into Twitter for serendipity but otherwise I find it’s just people retweeting news that I’ve already read via feedly.The FT app is very good value for money and the only mainstream ‘newspaper’ I read.

    1. Fernando Gutierrez

      I read the web version, but I agree that FT.com is great.

    2. Cam MacRae

      Thanks for reminding me to try Feedly again. Quite good these days.

      1. RichardF

        I like Feedly alot but this thread has reminded me to try out google currents, have you tried it out?

        1. Cam MacRae

          Yeah, I replaced Pulse with it. It’s a decent execution but one hell of a time sink.

  7. AvidReader

    I am current subscriber to the WSJ paper edition but I won’t renew it. They are starting to look like FOX newsI read Captivate in the elevator and METRO in the subway.

    1. fredwilson

      Elevator and subway!!! Love it

  8. John Revay

    I find myself relying more on Twitter.I was at a breakfast meeting the other day…and had time to scan the WSJ

  9. Cam MacRae

    Destinations (front page): The Guardian, Businessweek (less and less), news.ycRSS (Google Reader w/ Reeder): MacroBusiness, Naked Capitalism, BrandNew, BetaBeat, Mumbrella, Longreads.comKindle Fire (subs): The Atlantic, American PhotoAnd finally twitter, although I’m not using it much any more.

  10. awaldstein

    It just finds me.Twitter for most everything. Tumblr for art and city life. A handful of blogs.Friends via email often.Six months ago, Facebook would have been on the list. No more.

    1. Cam MacRae

      Very interesting re: Facebook. I’ve never had an account, but am curious what changed for you?

      1. awaldstein

        Facebook to me has/had two purposes:-Groups like my international wine community were firmly entrenched but now slowly moving to Twitter.-Global rolodex. Facebook is an amazing platform for collecting once real time friends whose trust still holds even though contact is minimal. If I want to find out who is taking the current photography in an Apple ad, I can find out in minutes through Facebook.

        1. Carl Rahn Griffith

          Said it before, and I will say it again – Facebook is about as mobile as a fridge.If the medium doesn’t primarily lend itself to mobile as a news source platform, then it is pretty compromised. Period.

          1. fredwilson

            I am stealing that fridge line from you my friend

          2. Carl Rahn Griffith

            With pleasure!

          3. falicon

            believe it or not, the idea of the mobile fridge is just around the corner -> http://dornob.com/portable-… 🙂

          4. ShanaC

            brilliant!

        2. JamesHRH

          Fb is the never-lose-a person-you-met service. But the feed is mostly a cry for help.Can’t imagine thinking of it as a news service.

          1. awaldstein

            So…No news. NO commerce. Little engagement.Get the rolodex piece as I said above.So the reason for a company to have fan page is? (I’m goading you of course.)

          2. JamesHRH

            Couldn’t agree more….

          3. Anne Libby

            I set up a FB page about 18 months ago as I watched mobile adoption eat my formerly well-received client email newsletter — and not everyone (even in tech) lives on Twitter.One of the young companies in the WIM accelerator, appguppy, is making a mobile app that subject matter experts can use to curate several streams of “news,” including original content. Promising.

          4. laurie kalmanson

            “the feed is mostly a cry for help”slain now; dead of laughing.

    2. William Mougayar

      Why is FB worse now?

      1. awaldstein

        There are options that work better.

        1. Carl Rahn Griffith

          Facebook seems to be trying to be one’s all-encompassing landing/destination page environment – like the old fashioned My Yahoo! portal homepage approach.Urgh.

          1. awaldstein

            Feels like network TV with our chatter the news.Eventually the snake eating its own tail will vanish for lack of food.

          2. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            FACEBOOK WANT TO BE AOL.THAT MISTAKE.EVEN BIGGER MISTAKE IS GOOGLE WANT TO BE FACEBOOK AFTER FACEBOOK TURN INTO AOL.

    3. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

      Yes. If it is a damn NEWS it finds you.I was not on the radio,tv,internet or phone when i heard about the earth quake in Indonesia.

      1. awaldstein

        Threads just find you as your nets get deeper.

  11. William Mougayar

    I still get a lot of customized feeds via Eqentia which I set out to build previously as the best configurable news aggregator. And it still is, if you want to have a targeted feed that is more precise than what’s popular & bubbling up everywhere. Filtering the social media new has been a failure so far. No one has done it well, and it’s Twitter that should do it.  Why do we have separate Search Saves & we can’t merge them? Why is the Boolean search expression so limited on Twitter? And why can’t we get a decent alerting system if there is news that triangulates 3 keywords that you are particularly interested in.We were doing that with Eqentia, but few wanted to pay for it, and the enterprises that did wanted to configure the news for their marketing advantage. Social news is winning, but it is making us all read the same things more or less. 

    1. awaldstein

      Great comment.Curation systems for news did not fulfill their promise.Social nets and communities as implicit and dynamic curation platforms work.Tumblr has filled a huge gap for niche interests like music and street art for me. Pinterest holds promise for this as well personally.

      1. Joel Valdez

        LinkedIn Today is very very good curating Twitter… Is like my customized personal newspaper every morning!

        1. Carl Rahn Griffith

          I must say LinkedIn is a lot better nowadays and the iPhone App is pretty good. I do dip in more often and find bits of news there. Good point.

        2. awaldstein

          I haven’t used Linked In in months. I’ll relook.

          1. Carl Rahn Griffith

            It’s been totally transformed, Arnold – especially in mobile guise. Still unsure why some people insist on connecting all their Tweets to their LinkedIn stream as it can generate so much trivial noise it spoils the LinkedIn stream. Wish they’d adopt some kind of selective tweets hashtag as with Twitter > Facebook. Hence the need to cull people, now and then 😉

          2. awaldstein

            Thanks Carl.

          3. Anne Libby

            There is a selective tweets feature for LI, it’s #in. And I agree, active tweeters risk creating noise on LI.

          4. ryan singer

            I find linked in really annoying with all the emails… Is it just me or is there a wave of users attempting to connect on there? sometimes I get 3 emails a day about people who want to connect to me (people I actually know). 

          5. awaldstein

            I stopped using it for that reason, no sense of community and their view of people is useful but almost never that revealing about who you really are.If we were to connect for coffee lets say to talk about a project, I would be interested in your URLs , your Disqus comments. That would tell the tale.But…I would bet that most Linked In uses are searching for jobs or searching for people to fill them. That discovery process is not the center of what I do.

          6. LE

            I asked a question on the linkedin Porsche group about a feature and on a model I was consider buying. I got responses from enthusiasts all over the world with their opinions.  I was surprised – it was the first time I had tried something like that. I started a group for Rc Helicopter enthusiasts and people signed up right away. I joined several groups related to domain names I was trying to sell (they were not domain people but end users in particular industries) with thousands of members and received inquries after posting some info (no sales yet but that will come with time).

          7. awaldstein

            Thanks for sharing this. Maybe I should revisit.But I bet the age old truth that certain topics create more actionable groups is forever true.I used to participate in the marketing/web community groups but the platform itself was not indicative for engagement as most of the topics were less sharing facts and more brainstorming. So I bailed.Probably the more specific the topic that can still drive a larger enough group around an actionable question, the better it is. The broader and nebulous it is, the less so most likely.

          8. Donna Brewington White

            Certainly, the main reason I open up LinkedIn most days is for seeking passive candidates, but it is also a great business development tool. I’ve found it to be very useful for tracking trends and also sometimes a particular company’s behavior. The saved search feature sends me a weekly email informing me who has been hired in a particular industry, field and geography — I’m watching it build and when it reaches a certain level, I know the opportunity is ripe for a business proposal I am working on — not to mention I am building a contact list.

          9. ShanaC

            It still remains my personal professional contact book though. It doesn’t help me discover, rather, organize.

          10. LE

            Agree same feeling – I noticed the same change. A contact doesn’t mean anything anymore.  

        3. William Mougayar

          Customized “grossly” and based on popularity. That’s not personalized. You’re missing a whole lot if you just rely on LI news.

        4. Rohan

          LinkedIn Today.. you mean Spam your inbox today?:)

      2. John Best

        News curation systems *absolutely* must take account of social dissemination of news.Sharing of links through social networks happens because because communities form around shared interests, locations, opinions etc.Failing to take the interests of social links in the sharing of news is failing to take into account what news IS.

        1. Mark Zohar

          Agreed. That’s why we created TrendSpottr (http://trendspottr.com); a real-time viral content discovery service that identifies emerging trending news and content with the highest real-time shared engagement value. You can try to fight the crowd, but you can’t ignore it. 

          1. John Best

            Exactly!

      3. Dale Allyn

        This is an interesting comment to me, Arnold. We’re all a bit different, and I’m certain that you’re more “social” than I (a good thing, especially in your field ;), but my “social nets” are rarely a source of information – at least “news” type info. This sort of segues to the discussions around Facebook as a search for “useful consumer info” as in “which flat screen television should I buy?” I would not seek the answer to that question on any sort of social platform or among friends unless the former was an audiophile/theater community and the latter were specifically knowledgeable. I’ve had this conversation with others (regarding FB filling this need) and my contacts snort in agreement. This is a remark regarding FB, not your sources. I suspect that your communities are much better curated for your purposes. I DO get the value of checking within your contacts as you have described your wine selecting, and that refers to the specialized groups to which I refer above. But for news, it wouldn’t work for me.

        1. LE

          “”which flat screen television should I buy?”Agree with what you are saying. And I think people look for shortcuts when they simply need to research and consider many sources of information and what is important to them in particular.I’ve known people who obsess over consumer reports to buy the best toaster oven. “Best” and “value”  means different things to different people depending on circumstances. One person might find value in crashing at someone else’s pad (found via airbnb) and another (me for example) wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.  I generally find other people’s ideas, which are based on their values, of limited use in most circumstances.  I’d rather be presented with all the available information and decide what’s important for me.Of course I do have people that I trust (as you’ve mentioned) for particular things that they are knowledgeable in. But I’ve also found that people have biases and if you don’t know about something yourself you can be easily swayed by one person’s opinion who you trust.

        2. awaldstein

          Great comment.It’s only in the last few months that I have this sense that there is a world post Facebook as it’s social mass market core.I think the fact that Facebook is a commerceless system, is indicative of their achilles heel.The growth of marketplaces is in response to this behavioral need for a one2one, people to producer, way to purchase and the fact that even though everyone is on Facebook, no one wants to shop there.Specialized groups are the only way I can make use of Facebook. Wine. Art. Marketing are there but the leaders at all levels are moving out to other platforms that are more engaging for conversations.

          1. Dale Allyn

            Important observations, Arnold. There’s so much potential to develop by making such observations and refusing to follow the status quo in developing new communities. 

          2. awaldstein

            Thanks.I believe strongly that the value of shares without implicit action (including transactions) and the definition of a gesture, now a like, next a language is in a fast transition.Both are keys to different types of communities.

          3. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            FACEBOOK HAVE COMMERCE.IT JUST NOT VERY GOOD.THIS BECAUSE NOT BAKED INTO EXPERIENCE. GO THERE TO SEE WHAT PEOPLE YOU PRETEND TO BE FRIENDS WITH DOING, NOT TO BUY THINGS FROM STRANGERS.

        3. ShanaC

          But that is you, I think many consumer choices are driven by their contacts and friend net since in the end, it is your friends that judge you as part of your in and out group.

          1. Dale Allyn

            Absolutely, Shana. We are all different and use our own methods. I believe my methods are similar to Larry’s (LE) as he describes here, while others (perhaps yours?) are quite different. I don’t follow what friends do (which is probably why FB doesn’t “work” for me), but others derive their identities by modeling to fit their social group. If one is happy with consumer purchases or other decisions which are based on polling social networks, then success is achieved. That’s what matters.

      4. laurie kalmanson

        communities move fast

    2. Dave W Baldwin

      Keep the faith in what drives you William.I notice the replies becoming a LinkeIn vs. Twitter and so forth… irrelevant.As tech and the related speeds improve, we have to remember the audience.  Today, we are still in a timeframe with so many link that are the same links.  A minority of those linking may have laughed at a story and share… the majority think those that see their link think those linking are somehow smart.In the end, a lot of redundancy.As I used in reply to Shana a few days back, towards 2014-15 will be a more anon time where AI will curate and bring up the best story related to query, not related to most popular, but related to the viewer and his/her level of likes/dislikes and so forth.

      1. William Mougayar

        Thanks Dave. And I think I have some working knowledge about the online/social news business. The promise of having systems know what news you want is improving, but it just complements and doesn’t replace other means of getting the news you need. And our needs change daily. That’s the challenge.

    3. ViniciusSpader

      I have to say that: Thank You so much for Eqentia!

    4. Emily Merkle

       would love to chat with you re: $Equentiafrom: social media neophyte in practiceself funded VC herefield: tech/media/[email protected]

  12. Sheamus

    Twitter, predominately, plus the BBC, Techmeme, a few email subs (AVC is one, via Feed My Inbox), Google Alerts, some RSS (the major tech blogs and a few specific interests, via iGoogle), and, more and more frequently of late, Reddit.I still like the idea of a newspaper and would be sad to see them go completely (especially the weekend papers), but haven’t bought one with any regularity since I stopped commuting to London, and even now will turn down the offer of a secondary read (on the train, etc), knowing that I’ve likely absorbed all I need to know, up to the minute, via my iPhone.Of course, a lot of this depends on what you qualify as ‘news’. That definition has shifted considerably over the past decade or so and is increasingly relative to the end user.

    1. fredwilson

      I drop by reddit a lot but it is not in my daily flow

      1. Ryan Melton

        What would you change with Reddit that would make it a part of your daily flow?

        1. fredwilson

          Nothing. Reddit is awesome. Its just a massive time sink for me.

      2. Lee Blaylock

         A few weeks ago a couple of my developers put me on to a mobile app that uses the Reddit API they like for news http://alienblue.org/ .  It is pretty cool if you like Reddit as a source

        1. fredwilson

          Thanks!

  13. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

    Call it a backward state of mind or country … I don’t spend much time on the internet.I get most of the news in paper and watching TV news. Ha … nothing like having the morning coffee + cigratte + News Paper … the time thenews gets boring … more coffee and more puffs goes in … & when the news gets interesting … the coffee gets cold and cigratte without puff gets to the bud.My time on internet is very little.I go to yahoo for my mails.I go to huffingtonpost for american news.I go to lensblogs of times and infocus of atlantic for some visuals across the worldI go to AVC to listen to some intellectual coversation.

    1. Cam MacRae

      My special morning treat is a pot of russian caravan and a petit corona – I know it’s an interesting news day when ash falls on the Kindle.

      1. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

        liked it. the one liner for my lengthy boring explanation.

        1. Cam MacRae

          I quite liked your explanation!

          1. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

            Ha … ha… it sounded like “I will scratch your back and you pat my back” … by ‘back’ here they mean back of the shoulder.

          2. Cam MacRae

            Nah – I liked it enough to reply.

    2. fredwilson

      Can i encourage you to give up that cigarette?

      1. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

        Thanks fred and frend.I tried 4-5 times and now i have given up on the giving up. I will try again once in this july (birthday resolution sort of :-).

        1. JamesHRH

          Kasi – there is a great ad program here in Canada, with the theme ‘keep trying to quit’. Don’t get down about it. Try something else.Count me in w Fred as ‘people who will be happy to hear you are trying to quit again’…..even if we hear you are trying to quit again 8 or 10 more times!

          1. Rohan

            Me too!

          2. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

            thanks James. It is good to know that there are good people who are concerned about health of a relatively unknown.I WILL.

          3. Emily Merkle

            That rocks.

        2. JLM

          My father started smoking at age 12 working as an apprentice printer.He quit in his 60s because he had been in a truck accident, had a bandaged nose, was in an oxygen tent and lit up a cigarette.His facial bandages caught on fire aided by the oxygen.He decided it is a sign from God when your face catches on fire from smoking.He quit.He will celebrate his 94th birthday on 2 June.Quit. Now. Before your face catches on fire.You can do it.

          1. LE

            65-12 =~ 53 years with cigarette smoking.Current age: 94(How is your retirement planning situation?)Of course that story probably isn’t one to tell kids in school since it’s such an outlier.

          2. JLM

            Never passed a glass of whiskey with the burden of being anything other than empty.Drank black coffee for decades in the Army.Did not know that red meat and potatoes could be substituted for.Smoked 3 packs a day.Lived hard in every war we fought for a third of a century.Always had a vegetable garden and always ate vegetables. From him I learned to eat tomatoes raw w/ only a salt cellar. Dirty carrots right out of the ground and cucumbers w/ a knife with the skin on.Quit smoking, began to eat well and will likely live forever.Has stared down pig valves, cancer and old age.He is one mean SOB and the hardest and smartest man I have ever met. I honestly think he will live forever.

          3. ShanaC

            why are you supposed to eat carrots still dirty?

          4. JLM

            It’s like cutting a Walleye filet while the fish is still alive and putting it right into the grease. Freshness.You whip a carrot out of the ground, wipe it off w/ a rag and eat it.

          5. FAKE GRIMLOCK

            DIRT IS HEALTHY.

          6. FlavioGomes

            To jlm: as a kid, vegetables straight from the garden was the only way to keep outdoor play unimpeded…washed down with water from the hose.I generally prefer a quick dispatch to my walleye. A fall brace of ruffed grouse that have been feeding on catkins and raspberries, taken by my trusted 870 would be a bonus compliment to the fillets. I can’t begin to describe how content I feel after such a meal.

          7. LE

            “age 12 working as an apprentice printer.”Letterpress? Probably Heidelberg or Kluge.

          8. Carl Rahn Griffith

            After leaving school, and before going to college, I was a printing apprentice – even in 1976 it was still primarily ‘hot metal’ based – it was not what I imagined at all – at school I had done some litho work-experience and expected this to be the same and a way to connect to my love of words, art, etc. Such aspirations (ie, the arts/etc) were not welcomed in my home/environment back then, so an apprenticeship it was and this way seemed a link.It was incredibly hard work, as a compositor, the air was full of lead fumes and the guys around me who had been there a few years all had a deathly grey pallor to their skin. They were mostly just in their late 20s.If I had stayed I am sure I would have taken up smoking.

          9. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

            I WILL  and will let you know when i did.thanks JLM.

          10. JLM

            You can do it.  I know you can.

          11. Emily Merkle

            I quit at 35. A year ago. Super decision.

      2. LE

        And Kasi worked for a short time at the Fox Chase Cancer center.Obviously kids have always known that cigarette smoking is bad. But I wonder if they are taught about addiction and how difficult if not impossible it will be to stop smoking once hooked. 

        1. Kasi Viswanathan Agilandam

          Yes LE. I worked in FCCC , Philly and also in a premier hospital in India (AIIMS) and i know the implications of smoking.But the habit struck me before i knew anything about it…when I was 17. 

      3. FlavioGomes

        It’s astonishing the level of will power required to defeat billions of research dollars that went into finding better ways to poison us. These are the only class of quitters that I have the highest level of respect for.

  14. Rohan

    3 Ways -1. Google Reader – feeds from WSJ and FT. LOVE the short 1 line version with a 2 line description. Skips away the gory details and pictures. This way, I know what’s going on without being dragged into the details..(Reeder app on the iPhone)2. The Economist’s free articles on the iPhone app – if this constitutes as news3. Twitter, Facebook, colleagues, friends.

    1. Fernando Gutierrez

      I’m subscribed to The Economist and I think that it’s the only publication I get in paper (the price is basically the same for a print and print+online), but I’m not sure either if it’s news. You can pick an issue that’s a few months old and you still enjoy most of it.

      1. Rohan

        Agree 100%. It’s a fantastic ‘newspaper’ 🙂

  15. Rohan

    I remember someone telling me as a child thatNEWS PAPER = North South East West Past And Present Events ReportedMost likely made up.. but how cool!

    1. John Revay

      Cool Is there a type – could it beNorth East West South

      1. Rohan

        Absolutely right. That’s my ADD acting up there. 😀

  16. giffc

    Nytimes on my iPad on the train, and then flipboard for twitter, hacker news, tumblr and google reader. Plus news.me email and a bit of Zite.

  17. guyAtHockeyBiasDotCom

    Fred, If you like hockey, please try my drudge-like (in a layout sense) labor o’ love, http://HockeyBias.com for a variety pack of sources. Thanks! …and ‘Go AnybodyButBruins!’ 🙂

  18. Joel Valdez

    I use Flipboard and LinkedIn Today. They both take and rank news from twitter, but just the ones that are popular and hot, but also relevant to my interests… That way I don’t stick to one source but to one topic… Which makes more sense to me.

    1. Patrick Morris

      I’m impressed with the quality of LinkedIn Today and have found it useful. Pretty much the only useful emails I’ve ever gotten from them. 

  19. Patrick Morris

    I was a big fan of Google Reader, but found myself obsessed trying to get through everything and not reaching 0 at the end of the day (which took up too much time). Now it’s primarily through Twitter, and a new system to get through my Reader. Another reason I transitioned away from Google Reader is commenting, and having the desire to see the physical sites and their design.

    1. Scott Barnett

      I still use Google Reader – what I like is that I can read it from anywhere (cell phone, tablet, laptop) and I know exactly what I’ve read and where I am.  I don’t need or care to know about the actual site design, I’m looking for the content.  It’s basic, but I still like the aggregation enough to keep using it.  I agree with the “zero messages” focus, but if I get too far behind I just zero it out.

    2. Philip Brown

      I used to have the same problem. Now I’m more ruthless and just click mark as read if I’m not going to read it that day.I figure if it is important it will resurface itself to me at some point in the future.

      1. Patrick Morris

        Yea that’s what I’m doing now too

    3. fredwilson

      If only google reader would integrate with disqus

      1. William Mougayar

        Like how? Can u elaborate

        1. Rohan

          So you can comment on reader posts, I’m guessing.

      2. falicon

        I built my own little tool to give me something like this on mobile -> http://mads.ly (very rough, but it gives me a quick way to keep up with comments on the blogs I pay close attention to)

        1. fredwilson

          cool. nice hack!

      3. thebeff

        I use http://www.reader2000.com for my news. It basically resurrected Google Reader after the great +purge.

  20. Mark Zohar

    Like most folks, I have my go-to sites: Guardian, NYT, Globe & Mail, Techmeme and, of course, I consume news all day long on Twitter as well. I am also “eating my own dog food” and using TrendSpottr to discover early trending news and emerging viral stories from various content sources and for topics I’m interested in. The cool thing about this is that in one interface I can see all the top trending content from The Guardian, NYT, Washington Post, LA Times, Wired, etc — usually hours before these stories have become “popular” and gained mainstream attention. It really has changed the way I discover, consume and share the news and literally gets me information that’s “ahead of the curve”. I should note that our enterprise customers include Reuters, AP, CBS, Toronto Star, The Atlantic, Postmedia, BBC and many other news and media companies that are using TrendSpottr to discover early breaking news with high viral potential as well as a competitive intelligence tool to discover which of their competitors’ stories are going viral. Our other customers and partners include HootSuite, DataSift, Visibli, NM Incite and several social marketing and analytics companies. You can check out videos of TrendSpottr in action here: http://youtu.be/T6U6pldCfXY and http://youtu.be/oChJVdl1k2M and try it for yourself at http://trendspottr.com and on HootSuite by installing our app from HootSuite’s App Directory: http://hootsuite.com/appdir…. 

  21. Brent

    The app Reeder for iPhone, iPad and Mac does a beautiful job of merging the reading experience of iBooks and Mail and applying that to your Google Reader feed. I don’t think there is an app I use more. You can download so many posts, even though you’ll never get through them all I just know if I’m stuck on the subway I’ll always have something to keep me busy.

  22. Philip Brown

    I use RSS religiously, I can’t seem to find a better way to consume content, and I don’t find Twitter nearly as good. Perhaps I’m not following the right people?I use Google Reader on the computerReeder for iPhoneReeder for iPadAnd I also follow some people on Tumblr and save pages on Readibility.

  23. Eric Pratum

    I get some news from Twitter, but not much. Most of it would just be links that are auto-tweeted from the two Reddit feeds.After that, it’s primarily Google Reader using Feedly. The thing that I like about this option is that I subscribe to subsections of some sites that offer RSS feeds (eg. reddit.com/r/marketing) and can skim the updates, only open the ones that sounds interesting, and mark the rest as read.My final bit of news is three podcasts I subscribe to that are a bit of tech/marketing news and punditry, or commentary.No TV news if I can help it. No radio. No newspaper. No magazines. Etc. Not that those are bad of course. Just not my cup of tea.

  24. falicon

    My sports news now comes from http://turfd.com (it aggregates and auto-tags sports news from all over the web)….and yes, it’s yet another service/product from the mind of falicon.

    1. fredwilson

      #checkthisout#tellmysontocheckitout

    2. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

      Pretty neat. Even found news about my beloved (and suffering) Stade français, the Paris rugby team. I usually break sports news thingmos with that one.

      1. falicon

        Hey thanks!To be honest, I don’t have a ton of sources plugged into it yet (maybe around 75)…but I do have a massive list I’m slowly working my way through (and adding to the list as people point out new sports sources to me)…so it will (hopefully) only get better.I’ve also got a lot of ideas/plans for improving the auto-tagging, sharing, and social features for the service over time (right now it’s a hobby project, so I’m really just doing a little at a time and trying to improve it as much as I can in my spare time).

        1. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

          I took it as a sideproject when I evaluated it, and it looks pretty solid so far. Keep at it.

        2. fredwilson

          i set up a feed on the thunder (OKC NBA Thunder) and i’m getting stories about golf tournaments being delayed because of thunder

          1. falicon

            Thanks for the head’s up…I’ll look into it and see if I can’t clean it up a bit (the system defaults to an OR search right now so that more stories are likely to show up, but it’s a problem for some teams with common names [worse for teams that share names across sports like Giants]…there are advanced features I haven’t really released ye that help you say “just this team within this sport” but they aren’t really ready for prime time yet).Hopefully you are still getting some useful OKC news out of that feed too though…and it will def. improve as I continue to build it all out. 😉

          2. fredwilson

            yes, it is useful.is there a way for the news feed to be delivered via email or some other way to remind me to check it out?

          3. falicon

            I do have email alerts in the works…I haven’t released them for the general public yet because they aren’t all that stable (and I’m not happy enough with the style/design I hacked together for them yet)…but I will release it in the next day or so for sure.Once I do, you will be able to get custom feeds via email (and you will be able to subscribe to others custom feeds too).There is an RSS option for just about any/every view as well…but I know you don’t really use RSS so that doesn’t help you much (but it’s there for others that might want it).Also have plans to add in some mobile notification stuff…but haven’t started that yet (I have just gone with a mobile-web version rather than a pure native app for this so far – so limited in what notifications and things I can do that way)

          4. fredwilson

            i think mobile notifications would be overload for every story. but once a day might be good. wouldn’t that require a mobile app?

          5. falicon

            No way I would do a notice per story (there are already thousands of stories a day flowing through the system)…so it will def. be a once or twice a day sort of thing (prob. just with a taste of the latest stories to pass through related to your feed because some feeds can be pretty massive depending on what you set it up for). The alerts will be a configured thing so each user can set the frequency that works best for them.Mobile push notifications do require a native app…that’s what I meant by not having started it yet (but I am considering it for down the road — right now I like the mobile web version enough for my own needs, so I haven’t really decided on that front yet)…the one thing that I *might* do as an in between is just use twillio and let users get a once or twice a day txt message thing set up to let them know how many stories are coming in for their feeds each day (would that be something of interest to a user like you? I’m on the fence for it myself, but that’s because I pay enough attention to the site to not really need it yet)

          6. falicon

            heads up that initial email alerts feature is now released to the site…to find it, just log in and go to any custom feed…the green box in the side navigation should have details on how to turn them on (and give you details on what they are when you click the ‘sign up for gentle notices’ link)…for now this only in the web view…will evolve into something MUCH better over time.

          7. fredwilson

            awesome. will check out

    3. matthughes

      Awesome! I just signed up.

      1. falicon

        Cool thanks…the ‘custom feeds’ that you can set up once you have an account are the real reason I started building this for myself…I think there can also be some really interesting things in sharing and talking about sports with just your friends that the project can eventually allow for (but most of that is just stuck in my head for now) 😉

    4. ShanaC

      :/ not a sports follower.

      1. falicon

        we’ll eventually convert you…

        1. ShanaC

          doubt it. In certain ways I’m a very girly girl, this is one of them…

  25. JamesHRH

    I read ESPN.com and get most news on the radio in the vehicle. Good multitasking combo. I use Twitter mostly for work info.LinkedIn feed is a pain, mostly. Yesterday, Om Malik closed his Li account!Can’t imagine taking the time to customize my slice of the news world – I like to know what is popular, even if I have a different agenda personally.Still check out local & national paper sites – never a hard copy.

  26. Raj

    I think a more interesting question (to me at least) is how do you discover music?  The news discovery problem is well solved individually.  We may not all use the same source, but the problem is generally satisfied per individual.

    1. fredwilson

      Turntable, tumblr, and exfm

      1. FlavioGomes

        Soundcloud doesn’t make that list Fred?

        1. fredwilson

          not for discovery. they may change that. i find the stuff elsewhere but bookmark it there.

          1. FlavioGomes

            Hmm..interesting. It would be good if they did. I’d also checkout wearehunted.com they monitor web activity and rank emerging music. Found some interesting artists this way.

    2. Alexander Close

      previous said, plus 22tracks & hypemCan’t forget the blogs, and there are many. (pitchfork, stereogum, gorillavsbear etc…)But turntable is #1, partly because djs there are serious audiophiles, but mostly because you’re somewhat forced to listen to tracks in their entirety.  You force yourself to hear something out – it broadens your horizons. 

    3. Emily Merkle

      I know it when I hear it and so do you

  27. brian trautschold

    Vast majority is from Twitter -but I try to bounce between the tech industry microcosm (HackerNews), PandoDaily (for “tech editorial”), TechCrunch for “funding news”, RealGM & Hoopshype (NBA news) – and then Reuters & USA Today so I know what the general news perception is. [tiny plug] I’m seeing quite a bit on here about the aspect of content personalization, custom aggregation, and the lack of social filters – actually exactly what my startup http://www.retickr.com is attempting – great topic, great comments, happy Friday to all. 

    1. CourtneyBoydMyers

      I’m the Features Editor of The Next Web and we’ve been adding a load of great editorial content that I’d love for you to eyeball and add to your reading list! 🙂

  28. kidmercury

    i use an rss reader. too many to list, but here are my favorites:1. for US news and basic kook stuff (like 9/11), infowars.com2. for deep kook stuff — like hte secret space program, extraterrestials, the nature of reality, etc — projectcamelotproductions.com3. for financial markets, jsmineset.com4. for energy, chrismartenson.com, twitter.com/pwrhungry (robert bryce), energyandcapital.com5. for entertainment, businessinsider.com (and also to know when something is mainstream and time to sell)6. for technology, techmeme, techcrunch, thenextweb, rww

    1. JLM

      I used to know Alex Jones before he was a kook. I love his energy but I think he’s nuts. A very entertaining nut nonetheless.

      1. kidmercury

        i actually first got into AJ because i thought he was/is a new media pioneer, so i was subscribing to learn about new media through observation. now i am a true believer though, with the exception of his religious views. he is easily my favorite journalist and the kind of journalism (niche, multi-media, community-oriented, monetized via branding) i believe the internet will enable. 

        1. JLM

          kid, AJ is not a journalist though he does bring to light some very interesting stuff. He is nuts but in the nicest way.

          1. Emily Merkle

            Nuts here. Nice here. Not journalist.News sources:By … Subject?Technology, Engineering, Foreign Policy, yadayada : my brother in law. Air Chauffeur to The Dude.Business: a couple of very profitable hedge funds are run by neighbors on my floor. I am warming them up.Everything else? Talk to me.

          2. kidmercury

            depends on how you define journalists. i define it as a person who delivers important news for a living. if you wish to debunk his claims i welcome you to do so — you know that is my favorite conversation!

      2. ShanaC

        small world. very small indeed.

    2. matthughes

      “and also to know when something is mainstream and time to sell”Ha-ha!

  29. markslater

    My twitter feed is my business feed – it tracks everything that i need to read related to my company. FB allows me to skim my social network. thats it. no papers, no magazines. alot of my news comes from people emailing me articles etc. My advisors are constantly sending me stuff. 

  30. mikenolan99

    In no particular order:iGoogle page (Headlines, New York Times, Weather) plus RSS feeds (AVC, Altucher, Seth, Pogue, LooseKannon, WSJ.com US Business, Penelope Trunk, Ed Batista, OnStartups, Corner Office NYTimes, Mark Ramsey)Radio – Minnesota Public RadioOnline subscription to my local paper – MankatoFreePress.comThen, wherever the links take me…

  31. Brad Lindenberg

    I consume news the exact same way… Twitter then a link to a link to a link. Then I think how did I get here? Then go check email or something, and do it again 20 minutes later.I also never read the paper, but I’m always reading stuff on the web.I like to watch CNBC while I eat lunch.

  32. Rod Gammon

    Reuters app & RSS via Flipboard on phone for updates, WSJ/Economist/New Yorker etc. on iPad for deeper cuts

  33. Rohan

    And how can I forget -Football365.com. Goal.comMost important news I check in a day.

  34. Brad Lindenberg

    And AVC at night (morning in NY) then AVC comments in the morning (Night in NY)

  35. David A. Frankel

    During the week, it’s FirstRain, Twitter, and LinkedIn for me pretty much.  I configure FirstRain for the topics and companies that I am following, and get intraday emails (in addition to having stories sent to our corporate Twitter account via RSS & dlvr.it). I also love Paper.li on Twitter — great source of stories from people I follow.Weekends, it is NY Times. Business sections both days always have at least one or two thought provoking pieces (which I subsequently tweet about).  Interestingly, I NEVER read the front section.

    1. William Mougayar

      How much do you (or company) pay for FirstRain.

  36. Jason Humphries

    The Twitter client for the Mac is amazing. Also, Twitter is a source that you can access from any device/machine. TechCrunch, Walt Mossberg, Fred Wilson, Wall St Journal, WSJ Tech, Alexia Tsotsis

    1. William Mougayar

      What’s the Twitter client for Mac. Separate App ?

  37. FlavioGomes

    CBC – CanadianBBC – europeAljazeeraFinancial postCanoe.caCNNOpinionEconomistWilson quarterly

    1. William Mougayar

      I used to like the Al Jazeera & France24 iPhone Apps for a good dose of international news, but it kept reminding me how messed up many parts of the world still are, and I can’t do a thing about it.

      1. FlavioGomes

        William I’m in complete agreement.  And despite how distressing some of that is to read, its important for me to keep a pulse on it.  A distant early warning so to speak. Another angle I find interesting in these foreign news outlets is how countries go about shaping public opinion and their views, use and censorship of the social web.  What I’m seeing keeps me cautiously optimistic that government control of the web is a fleeting and daunting task and that citizens approach to web freedom can be as fierce as the human will to survive.

  38. testtest

    i like to shift between different services; making the combination that has the best cost/benefit.i don’t need to know the news right now. i just need to know it’s happened. any time i can aggregate news to make it more efficient i do. an example is moving from a hacker news bot on twitter to this newsletter http://hnsummaries.com/i like to consider the reason i consume news rather then just trying to be in the loop. as i eluded to yesterday, you don’t get points for knowing the most facts. yes, it can look impressive: in a conversation down the pub recently i reeled of a ton of figures, and in a comment the other day i used a quote that i have committed to memory. but so what? does that create an insight to make a truly needed product? or does that foster technical competence? does it f*ck.

  39. Louis Chatriot

    For political/economical news: The Economist (paper edition !). I couldn’t find a better newspaper, certainly not national ones (I’m French).For tech news: HN, r/programming, TechmemeAnd a lot of blogs like yours (bothsidesofthetable, continuations, Elad’s blog, coding horror and so on) 🙂

  40. stillmatis

    I always wonder what percent of the NYT print revenue comes from people who are really only buying it for the crossword. Every Thursday-Saturday, I grab the paper, fold over to the puzzle, and throw the rest in the nearest trash can.

  41. yngling

    RSS. I have collected a list of blogs that throughout the day gives me a newsfeed that covers pretty much the stuff I want to be made aware of, while hiding the stuff I do not.A couple of times a day I hit the shortcut for Google Reader, and read through new posts. Interesting stuff will often lead to me following further urls of course.

  42. Ben

    No newspapers in decades. A couple of specialty magazines (Aviation Week; Jane’s). CNN & Google News once per day in the morning. Facebook and G+ feeds once per day in the morning. Approx. 75 RSS feeds (via Goog Reader) 1-2 times per day. A couple of specialty mailing lists (Arocket, Lasersour). Twitter feed when hot news is breaking.

  43. BradDorchinecz

    Twitter.  I let others read the newspapers/news sites and then read what they like.

  44. Tom Labus

    BloombergTweetdeckStocktwitsWSJ. But moving away quickly because of ownership/bizarre editorials.NYT print version for longer articles. I still like going outside in the morning in all weather to grab the papers.The VergeGigaomEngadgetAnd all sports sites I can find. Opening day at Yankee Stadium.

    1. awaldstein

      I see GigaOm on a few of these.I’m a big fan of Om, have been since the beginning when as a tech exec on the coast was always trying to get his attention.Really an excellent writer along with his a personal voice.

      1. Tom Labus

        How have they done with the subscription business?

    2. William Mougayar

      Never heard of The Verge. will check it out.

  45. Aaron Klein

    I used to have MSNBC.com as the first link on my browser toolbar. Then I realized I never went to the homepage any more. Twitter had completely replaced that and I only visited articles at various sites. Was an interesting day when I deleted it…I had been a user of that home page since 1996.Today, it’s simple: Twitter, Techmeme and Politico.

  46. mathewi

    Twitter lists, followed by Techmeme, Mediagazer, Hacker News — some of which I consume through Flipboard and News.me when mobile

    1. William Mougayar

      Mathew, You are the ultimate Twitter stream power reader.

  47. Dave Pinsen

    Haven’t been following all of this as closely recently, but:Hard copy newspaper: The FT. Particularly enjoy the weekend edition with the “Lunch with the FT” interviews, etc.Real Time news and tech stuff: TwitterPolitics: Real Clear PoliticsSports: ESPN Sports CenterStocks: Yahoo! Finance

  48. Tommy E

    I get my news from todaysrage.com*todaysRAGE is a new trending news and hot topic website that gives you an idea of what is currently trending on the internet.  At the same time, it gives you a brief, fact-driven synopsis about that topic.  Short on time – go to todaysRAGE.Want to see what’s hot – go to todaysRAGE.Want the facts- go to todaysRAGE.Want to support my site- go to todaysRAGE.The site is only a few months old, but is starting to get more popular by the day.  Go to http://todaysrage.com/about to learn more!*sorry for the plug, I can’t help myself.

  49. Luca Hammer

    I love Wavii (https://wavii.com/). It provides me with tech, business and politics news in an easily scanable format. Only takes some minutes a day to stay on top. Mainstream news only.For all niche stuff I use Twitter and Google Reader. I am subscribed to 100 to 150 feeds I accumulated over the past years. G+ and FB don’t play an important role yet.

  50. Jeff Judge

    The Flipboard app had redefined how I consume news. It’s so efficient and user friendly, I flip through hundreds of stories while eating breakfast and can easily favorite, like, share, eetweet, etc.

  51. charlieok

    What I want but haven’t yet found:A tool that takes the RSS or Atom feed provided by any site, ranks the items in the feed, removes items below a configurable threshold, and provides the result as another RSS or Atom feed.The ranking should happen by some measure of engagement. Some signals may be site-specific (comments and other actions internal to a site) while others may be universal (links shared on social networks).The main feed I have in mind to use for this is techmeme, which as far as I can tell doesn’t offer any configurable feeds; just a firehose.

    1. ryan singer

      One thing I love is google reader on chrome with the Google Reader Readable extension. It doesn’t do what you’re saying, but it delivers the feed in a simple clean look.

    2. MonsterTrafficJam

      We’re working on something similar. We have a huge portfolio of Twitter accounts publishing links to news stories. Each account covers a single niche topic. The topics collectively are represented in a hierarchy. (Think of the major news categories of the NY Times but with sub-categories and sub-sub-categories and so on, with each level of category represented by a Twitter account.) News is sourced from an aggregation of news aggregators around the web. We have separately built a social curation tool that measures the popularity of posts based on RT’s, likes, etc. We’re now in the process of refining the Twitter account streams to only tweet “best of’ content on a X posts/hour basis (i.e. not too overloaded).

  52. sigmaalgebra

    From the news, I want to be well informed for my business, my life, and as a voting citizen.  So, I want to know what is happening in the US and world economies, politics, and foreign policy.  I want to hear about the high spots of new results in business, science, engineering, medical science, medicine, technology, and military systems.For all these purposes and in all these cases, I want rock solid information at least up to the standards of college term papers with careful statement of claims, solid support of claims, primary references, etc.  Whenever possible I want quantitative information.I nearly never get what I want.My view is that nearly all news just follows a media business model that goes back over 100 years, was being laughed at in a 1930s Andy Hardy movie, where the content is not actual information but, instead, just entertainment borrowing techniques from story telling, morality plays, classic charlatan manipulations, formula fiction, etc.  The intention is to get my eyeballs by grabbing at me by the heart, the gut, and below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears.  The content is at the fourth grade except for math at the second grade and sex at the ninth grade.To get attention, the newsies are deliberately deceptive and misleading and deliberately omit solid information and references.While it is fair to call TV a “great wasteland” (and I’m still glad I cut off TV; my cable company has now offered me a new, much lower price for one year, and I’m not taking it; mostly don’t want TV in the house for free), the news is much worse.How bad is the news?  We are now in the middle of The Great Recession.  Paul Krugman aside, my view from all I can get is that overwhelmingly the cause of the Recession was actions by the US Federal government to put people in houses they could not afford.  To this end various powerful parts of Congress had Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac deliberately back junk mortgage paper.  Then the Countrywide business model was fairly obvious.  Parts of Wall Street were made offers to write CMOs they didn’t refuse.  The result was a gigantic real estate asset bubble which burst and, thus, wiped out the reserves of much of the financial system and much of the equity of individuals and businesses in real estate.  Bummer.  We are in the same song, second verse, of the financial asset bubble blowing and bursting that caused The Great Depression, spread around the world, caused WWII, and killed 50, maybe 100, million people.I don’t like such disasters.  This disaster was brought on by grotesquely, dangerously, and catastrophically incompetent actions by the US Federal government.  I’m outraged.  I’m not pissed; I am way, Way, WAY beyond pissed.That the US was so determined to put those people in those houses could stand as one of the greatest goals of the old KGB.And two of the main people in Congress pushing Fannie and Freddie?  May I have the envelope, please?  Yes, here it is:  Representative Barney Frank and Senator Barack Obama.  I don’t know which has been the more destructive.Such disasters are destructive and commonly run through the roof rates of unemployment, bankruptcy, domestic violence, substance abuse, infant mortality, divorce, clinical depression, heart attacks, strokes, infectious diseases, violent crime, and suicide.  Buildings fall; streets get potholes; bridges crack and fall; businesses fail; students drop out of school; governments run huge deficits; and the US starts down the road to North Korea.  Did I mention Barney Frank and Barack Obama?  Grotesque incompetence is a very ugly thing.The next such disaster could bring WWIII, global nuclear war, and the extinction of humans.On the way to these disasters, our newsies concentrated on their old business model and didn’t keep the citizens informed.There is no way, not a chance, the US would have gone for the real estate asset bubble blowing if the newsies had kept the citizens informed.  Not a chance.  But instead of information, what we got was Lindsay Lohan, etc., lots of total, degenerate, self-destructive nonsense about Lindsay Lohan.  Such a young woman is an old issue and inevitable:  Too much money, no good supervision, too little discipline, not nearly enough that is important to do, and extracting defeat from the jaws of victory.  I understand that issue.  It’s an issue for the woman, her family, and some judges but NOT for me or for voting citizens or our country.Due to the media not keeping citizens informed, indeed, deliberately creating confusion for the purpose of drama, I rate the media as the worst problem facing civilization on this planet and a serious risk of humans becoming extinct this century.I deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise the media.  Wolf Blitzer, in the Situation Room now, you are doing your best to destroy the world.  Same for the rest of media.Our media has been directed by what, the KGB?  Our media has done more damage to the US than any foreign adversary ever did with direct military action.Did I mention I hate the media?So, for news, I look for some solid information but rarely find it.I am optimistic that (1) some individuals and small organizations will develop the needed information and put it on the Internet and (2) people interested in such information will be able to get it.  Then from influential people, such information will spread virally and affect public opinion and policy and protect us from disasters such as The Great Recession.For news sources now, I don’t know of any I like.  I try to get information from C|Net, Hacker News, SAI BI (mostly only content they link to and not their content), and Google News.  The situation is a disaster.

    1. JLM

      Oh, yeah, I forgot one of my main sources of news — Brother Sigma.The guy is brilliant if you can hang on long enough to get to the end. We are talking half a latte here, but worth it.

      1. Dale Allyn

        I keep wondering how many keyboards he goes through per year. 😉

      2. Donna Brewington White

        I love anyone who makes me seem like a woman of few words. And you are right, he is brilliant.

    2. Safasf

      So true. Exactly my thoughts.

    3. laurie kalmanson

      know the filter

  53. Elia Freedman

    I use RSS mainly plus Techmeme, Hacker News and a few other sites I visit regularly. I try to read very broadly so read general news, politics, sports, tech and business. I also read National Geographic and Business Week. I used to read the local paper plus about six or seven magazines too but gave all those up so I can read more books. (I get the local news via RSS reader.)More important is what I am missing: the front page (or front section). What are the top stories today locally, nationally and internationally that are important with the ability to dig deeper, maybe with multiple perspetives. I’ve tried a whole bunch of services and products and none seem to do the trick. They always seem to be filled with pop culture drama rather then real news.

  54. anand

    usually I go to Google –> News –> Tech/ScienceAlso use Twitter/Tumblron rare occasions I go to cnn msnbc nytimes

  55. DevCodeHack

    Interesting that I got your post on the news reader I just made. http://readnewswire.com/ (mobile coming soon). 

  56. ErikSchwartz

    Google reader synced across all my devices.

  57. Michael Shafrir

    This is a pet fascination of mine.First thing in the morning, I check Twitter — it’s my breaking news, my CNN, my NYTimes, my morning crier in one neat curated package.  I continue to check Twitter throughout the day, following about ~450 people or feeds.  The links that I see sent out by multiple people catch my attention, but I also have a few trusted people that I generally read what they send they send out. I also have a Google Reader (RSS) that has ~50 feeds that I check three or four times a day.  I keep thinking that Twitter will eventually move me away from this habit but I have yet to really be able to replicate the speed and ease of reading multiple articles in one sitting on my phone (which is where I check Twitter mostly) like I can on a laptop (i like to go through all my RSS feeds at once, tabbing out articles I want to wholly consume).  I also check the homepage of cnn.com, cnnsi.com, espn.com, nytimes.com, boston.com, and maybe a few other sites a few times a day, but again, increasingly, I rarely find something I have already gotten a whiff of on Twitter (or, less frequently RSS).  I also check rotoworld.com during fantasy basketball season.News.me does a nice weekly feature of “how do you consume the news” but I’ve often dreamed of a voyeuristic site that shows me how others browse the web (I’m not talking heatmaps or eyetracking, I’m talking about consumption habits).

  58. Jeromy Sonne

    Hacker News, Silicon Prairie News, The Economist, Venturebeat, and The Wall Street Journal.

    1. fredwilson

      Silicon Prarie!!! i love it

  59. jonahcrane

    i still read newspapers because i need to know what’s in hard print where (don’t ask why). for my personal interest, twitter has become the most useful tool: it’s a real-time curator that allows me to create a network or series of networks that reliably sources up to my home page all sorts of stuff i find incredibly interesting and would certainly put on my “list” to read, but likely would not have found had i been forced to search for all the news on my own … something better will surely come along, but for now twitter is hands down the most useful tool. 

  60. theschnaz

    On WNYC a while back, they had a guest who was stressing day old news. The idea is that news has become hyperactive. Just because it’s news, does that mean it’s really important? Without trying, I roughly follow this pattern…Day Old (Analysis):-Economist-NYT-New YorkerBreaking:-Twitter-FB (mostly personal news)-Alley Insider (feels dirty to admit this)In Between:-Instapaper has been great for this. All of the breaking news that I personally think is worthwhile can be saved for later.Books:-Read books! While the info might not be breaking news, it will be news to you! I’m reading Imagine now (http://www.amazon.com/Imagi….Last note, I signed up for Wavii (https://wavii.com/) yesterday. I like the concept, but I don’t think it will beat Twitter + Instapaper.

    1. Tom Labus

      Books, YES.We may be all better off reading a few well researched pieces than visiting 20 sites for quick hits of “news”.

    2. jargon

      I, too, tend to get my news from books. Usually checked out at libraries.  The most reliable method to separate signal from noise is time.

      1. theschnaz

        I mostly agree, but I do keep an eye on breaking news.

  61. Aneel

    NPR’s Morning Edition streamed in the AM and All Things Considered + APM’s Marketplace streamed in the PM. Yes, radio. I like listening to the news while I churn through email.Then throughout the day whatever comes through twitter (@econbizfinance, @theeconomist, @clusterstock, @mktplaceradio) and gothamist (via feed).

  62. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry

    TWITTER. I spend the first hour every day going back through my timeline where I always find excellent stuff. Whenever something looks interesting, I’ll email the tweet to myself so I can read it when I’m dressed/sitting down. I also use two RSS readers: Feedly, which replaced Google Reader for me when it got all +’d, and BI’s own RSS reader, “The Tape”, which is pretty basic but aggregates tons of sources in near-real-time.While Twitter is a mix of professional news and more eclectic/personal, RSS is purely professional: if I didn’t have to track the news so closely/widely for professional reasons I wouldn’t use it.And obviously I get lots of news throughout the day from Business Insider, both from Twitter and from visiting the site.But my #1 source of news by far is Twitter.Edit: Oh, HA–forgot to mention it. I’ve been a happy subscriber to The Economist for over 10 years. Read it on the iPad now (my wife gets the paper version). Only news source I pay for. Happy to do it. Happy to know I won’t pay for anything else.

    1. Emily Merkle

      I like Economist as well.

  63. andyswan

    Drudge is an artist. Easily the most underappreciated of the web pioneers.

    1. JLM

      Drudge somehow has captured an audience which is Gutenberg Bible like in importance and proportion and significance.He saw it first and he acted first.He will go down as the first, the original and still strong as horseradish.What is funny is that HuffPo — which was a quick second — never captured the same enthusiasm (maybe I am wrong about this) but Arriana was able to turn that pony into a pot of gold.

      1. Emily Merkle

        Huffpo got bank but not heart. No cred. The NYTimes lives.

        1. JLM

          Huffpo has no readers.The NY Times is picking out headstones. Hospice house.

    2. melonakos

      Ditto

      1. fredwilson

        He is my first example in my “many ways to be an entrepreneur” presentation

  64. kenberger

    I hone my feed list so I can see all the action at a glance. It works super well with netvibes, and I glance at that dashboard often throughout the day and click out from there.I’m quite proud of this list. You can save the following opml file and import it using netvibes or other feedreader: http://kenberger.com/media/…Dave Winer had a super cool thing called “Share My opml” which would show other people’s feeds and show people who have similar lists to yours, but he took it down suddenly and mysteriously.

  65. Jason Gelman

    I get 95% of my news from Twitter.  The key for me is to meticulously curate my “following” group so that I’m getting a subset of news I want, with minimal junk.  So I’m updating my list very frequently.  The other 5% is from News.Me.  I really like what they’re doing with the simple email they send every morning.  It’s a “day after” thing where I get the top 5 most shared Twitter stories, which helps me fill in the gaps in case I was busy the previous day.  And everything I favorite on Twitter goes into my “Read Later” bin, so News.Me has become my “backup” news platform.  I rarely visit individual news websites at all.

  66. Ronen Mendezitsky

    I read stuff mostly off Twitter and Feedly – The amazing RSS tool.

  67. JLM

    I like unusual sources of news like Pravda in English, the Chinese Communist Army newspaper, the International Herald Tribune, Bloomberg, Wired, Stratfor (before it got hopelessly hacked), Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, the Economist, newspapers from Singapore, Beijing, Jakarta, Canberra, Jo-berg.My problem is I could read for 68 hours per day because it is all so damn interesting.I love reading the news in the native tongue/inflection of the country of origin.Because I have absolutely no trust in journalism anymore, I like to gather my own facts and make my own insights.The amount of news out there is unbelievable.And, yes, I do love Eqentia though I do not have it set just right yet. You could drown in that news flow.

    1. Cam MacRae

      Strikes me you might enjoy Asia Times’ “Spengler”, a nom de plume of the economist David P. Goldman. His riffs on demography are fascinating: http://www.atimes.com/atime

      1. JLM

        Great stuff. Read dshort.com for great analysis of the US economy.

        1. Cam MacRae

          Thanks for the pointer – looks interesting so I added it to my feeds.

    2. Dale Allyn

      You and I have similar reading patterns, Jeffrey. It can be a real time sink, but reading locally relevant and diverse sources is so different from “mainstream” anything.

    3. William Mougayar

      True about reading the news from where it comes from. If you rely on the “international” sections of US outlets, you’ll get that filtering with it.I also read Le Monde & other european/asian newspapers and you definitely get another perspective that’s native to their lens, and how they see the world.Try http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/ the Daily Yomiuri for Japan news.

    4. ShanaC

      I used to read the news like that – it got too exhausting, but what would I do for a mixture of style, general, business and technology news that was a mashup of sources *sigh*

    5. Ruth BT

      I read widely too but like Shana said – it becomes exhausting. I’ll often read the same story from different countries to get a more rounded worldview.I also like to know beforehand where the news source’s bias is before I commit to reading regularly. One network never on my radar is Fox/News Limited.

  68. Michael

    I just drastically winnowed my RSS feeds and my tops are AVC (no surprise there), Sully’s The Daily Dish, TechCrunch and a few others. However, what fascinates me is that I can keep up on all the big news, but I still for the life of me can’t figure out (e.g.) why there’s a demonstration down my street. Hmm…

  69. Andrew

    Bearing in mind that finding news (of a regional variety) *is* my work, here’s how it generally goes. This is a mix of stuff I do for work and for my own information.- first I check Twitter to find out what everyone is talking about- then I go to by dozen or so Twitter searches to find out what everyone is talking in different regions/topics I cover- then I go to a few blogs that I read, mostly for my own pleasure (like AVC)- then I open my bookmark folder that has about thirty community news site saved, to see what people are finding out from other sources- throughout the day, I come back to Twitter and one or two frequently updated sites for anything that develops that might not be coming into the press release email inbox or (believe it or not) over the fax machine. I’m also listening to at least three radio newscasts a day, and national TV news is on in our office- a couple of times a week, I check Google Reader. I have RSS feeds collecting blogs written by people who are in the region who might be writing about stuff that hasn’t come up in any other media- a couple of times a day I check the Pulse.me app on my phone to see what’s happening in national and international news (as well as tech and music news, for my own pleasure more than anything)- on the weekend, I read as much as I can of things I’ve saved to Instapaper. This is usually long-form stuff from the Economist, Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, New York Times, and the Atlantic- if city council is meeting, I have a read through their agenda the day before- and I probably peruse through a stack of newspapers delivered to our office once or twice a week. Believe it or not, you can still find stories in papers that aren’t online (mostly in community event listings and ads, but they’re there)I see a lot of comments about how the news is supposed to come to you. Which is true. The big stories that are on people’s minds almost always bubble up through social media. But I have to try to be out ahead of everyone else– and finding things that no one else will– and then make those stories come to our audience.

  70. LE

    Daily: WSJ delivered. I read that with dinner. Sunday: NYT delivered (I like real estate, style section, business, metro to name a few). I find it important to know what the NYT thinks is important.  I like to read the engagements and predict which relationships will last. I like the real estate section so I can see how the NYT fawns over and helps to prop up prices in the city.  (If you enjoy the same thing I highly recommend both “Million Dollar Listing” (Bravo) and “Selling NY” (HGTV)).Online: Techmeme, http://news.ycombinator.com , Betabeat.com , Techcrunch.com , Nytimes.com , Nypost.com , Nydailynews.com , Philly.com , local shit paper, google news (iphone)Broadcast: NBC Nightly news. I watch this when I’m on the treadmill. I curate that for my wife who then watches select portions later with me.  I like to know what stories go mainstream on the nightly news. Last night “Caines Arcade” made it on the news – I had read about it only the day before on HN.

    1. CourtneyBoydMyers

      You should add The Next Web to your reading list! 🙂

      1. LE

        I want http://thenextweb.com/ to do a “mediahacks” channel and focus on people such as Nirvan Mullick http://nirvan.com/ – He recognized an opportunity to play to the hearts of people and boost his own profile in the process. Lest anyone think it is all about recognizing the (um) genius of Caine. 

  71. davidcrow

    I have been using @bradfordcross:twitter’s @prismatic http://getprismatic.com/ and @summify:twitter to currate my Twitter feeds. They have been great in extending and filtering both TechMeme and Hackernews for content in my extended social graph.

  72. LE

    I don’t use twitter for news.But on the NBC news last night they (as they have done many times) mentioned twitter with respect to John Edward’s wife reacting (with her first tweet) to something Hillary Rosen (democratic strategist) said about her never working a day in her life. What is interesting is that when twitter is mentioned, the twitter logo shown huge on the screen.  This is obvious, but I’m not sure that all the young people realize that the mainstream media was responsible for a large portion of the success (and initial viral spread) of many of the things on the Internet that you take for granted today.  It can all be traced back to those first stories about the internet.  Don’t underestimate the power of this. We were featured in a syndicated story (which I had pitched) about 12 years ago that started in the local paper and then spread to maybe 15 Knight Ridder newspapers as a front page business section story with pictures. We knew when the story had hit a new city because all the sudden the orders would flow in from that city.  (By orders I mean people paying money for something not users or eyeballs. And to this day many of those customers remain and are still paying customers.)

    1. Emily Merkle

       Nor do I. I have an *extremely* granular bookmark list. on request. :)The way I read your post above, NBC News showing the Twitter logo drives home this fact: Twitter is people.

      1. LE

        I felt the use of the twitter logo was similar to a halo effect in a way by a brand trying to be hip and relevant to, at the same time, both the existing audience and a new audience (as if?). No doubt also that the producers who work there are young and are most likely twitter fans and that factored in.Related: The WSJ print edition has ads on the inside pages for private jet companies (either jet cards or share of a private jet). In one of the ads for “flight options” I saw “like us on facebook?” at the bottom.WTF?

        1. Emily Merkle

          Why the fuck is wsj advertising to jet riders? Huh!?

    2. Emily Merkle

      I have just dipped into Twitter but I know enough to be able to discern fact from fiction, spin from bullshit. Media is evolving. Media runs the world. Media pays our bills. Or has paid me in the past. Media is not evil. People are not evil.

    3. fredwilson

      you are 100% correct on this

  73. Dale Allyn

    This is a great topic, Fred. I wish that more people (at least those with whom I often seem to interact) would seek information across broader sources. I read Google news (news.google.com) as a primary “scraper”. It’s my home page on my primary browsing browser, so every new window shows me headlines. I have it set up for regions of the world which I follow closely, technology, computer security, Thailand, Burma, special topics, etc. There’s a lot of news stuff in my RSS reader, but I’m less good about using it (I prefer it for blogs). I check it, but I often go directly to the sites I prefer. I check Techmeme, HN, The Economist, FT, Fast Company, The Daily Beast, Bloomberg: Economy, The Drudge Report, Bangkok Post, etc.In the a.m. during breakfast I watch Fox news (yes FNC, it tends to be on in the background for a while in the a.m.), and in the evening I sort of watch local news and 30 minutes of NBC Nightly news (well, it’s in the background and I tend to be in and out, and/or reading during any television news).Anyway, on topics of interest (many), it’s important to get a wide range of viewpoints and sources because too many of those delivering “news content” have an agenda or bias filters on. It’s up to us to harvest the real info, and it takes a bit of digging or listening to those whose general point of view is not always in alignment with our own. Critical thinking on the part of the information consumer is absolutely essential if one wants facts regarding current events.

  74. rfradin

    I am old-school, I guess.  I still believe, by far, the best way to get news is RSS.  I have Google Reader setup beautifully.  The ‘Reeder’ app for the Mac and the same app for the iPhone is GREAT!  River of News for the iPad is GREAT.  Those products all sync across devices and that’s by far the best way to make sure I don’t miss anything.Beyond that, Drudgereport is still the best news homepage site and twitter is a nice supplement to round things out.

    1. Aaron Fyke

       I love that “old-school” is considered RSS!

  75. ryan singer

    I have a similar MO, but it kind of comes naturally while perusing the web. I’ll just read something that hits my interest sensors via any source be it Twitter, a friend on Facebook, a blog post with a link, then do my own google search and just kind of get in this groove on a topic for a while. It feels more conclusive to have a deeper understanding by coming to my own conclusion based on. Funny thing is my mom tells me that we should buy a TV for our family so we can watch the news to know what’s going on. Both my wife and I haven’t had TV for over 20 years since we were 17. 

  76. Koslow

    There is so much “news” and so many people “reporting” it that it can be a project just to find the truth, to find both sides of the story, and to be able to trust your news as factual. Information overload, everyone’s got an agenda, who can I trust?I use the Wall Street Journal app on android for finance/economics and world businessBBC app on android for perspective & I like their app designAl Jazeera when I’m feeling adventurous— Or to watch the revolution in Egypt live on cam–IncredibleTechCrunchYahoo for domestic news/pop culture AVC.com, Chinalawblog.com to stay on my game.Wikipedia.org   Everything is so interesting. As Fred said,  I just visit them and read, click, read, follow, read, and I go wherever the web takes me.I start on an article about natural gas shipping to Japan in the WSJ, which leads me to wikipedia about shale oil in the United States, leads me to the economy of Pennsylvania, which leads me to specifics on United States betting it’s future on natural gas,which leads me to a business profile and it goes on and on and on.  I could spend hours on Wikipedia.

  77. Ryan Melton

    I’m building http://narf.com as an alternative to Reddit.  Its still beta, and a little stealthy, but feel free to try it out.P.S. The Narf frontpage is guaranteed to not contain any cat memes.

  78. Peteris Erins

    Economist offline. Online, I use a combo of Newsblur (RSS), Prismatic and Twitter.

  79. Ciaran

    I tend to buy The Guardian and The Observer every Sat & Sun respectively. I wake up to Morning Ireland (on the main radio station), check the Guardian iPhone app on the bus to work, and tend to check its homepage several times throughout the day.For tech, I visit TechCrunch & Pandodaily several times a day, as well as my daily visit here (not sure AVC counts as news though). And, occasionally, if I’m watching when it happens to come on, I’ll watch the evening news.And, obviously, I often see links on Twitter and/or Facebook.

    1. fredwilson

      I cant reveal any news i am aware of. You get opinion here.

    2. CourtneyBoydMyers

      You should add The Next Web to your reading list 🙂

      1. Ciaran

        I might do. TC and PD are getting a bit tired

  80. Andrew Mihalkov

    I love Zite for its interface and quite decent algorithm. But the number of topics they have is limited to a several  hundreds and it cannot be customized.In the past few months I have mostly relied on Newspin.co, a private beta startup which allows you either to subscribe to ready-made topics (similarily to Zite) or create your own topics by describing the keywords, Twitter and RSS sources. Newspin has still no mobile or tablet app (I hope one is in works) and you can access the news only over the web. I hope the guys will also add RSS feed output. 

  81. j3janney

    I love newspapers; I used to read 3-4 each day.   But with young kids, that got cut back.On my Kindle DX I had a dozen sites bookmarked for news:  CNN, WSJ, NYT, PCMAG, CNET and some others.  I also have AVC, Slate, and several other sites which provide commentary and or advice, but not necessarily breaking news.  I generally use Instapaper for longer articles.

  82. daryn

    I’ve tremendously cut back my subscriptions over the past few years, but I still use google reader to aggregate my “news”. And to keep track of certain sources (like avc), that I don’t want to miss any content on, timely or not.  I don’t really spend time searching for news during the day, so while I occasionally check hacker news and the like, mainly I rely on glances at social tools (twitter, tumblr,  facebook) to catch breaking news and trending topics. As far as newspapers, never at home, but if we’re travelling or on vacation i find it relaxing to sit down with a pot of coffee and some ink on dead trees, even if I’ve heard all the news already, the editorial content (and comics and games) make it enjoyable. 

  83. TechFiltered

    Can’t help but plug our new site here… http://www.techfiltered.comWe think it is the BEST resource of tech news! We tag everything, and make drilling into topics easy. And, we’re trying to add lot’s of value by analyzing the data we collect. We’re the first to put out a Q1 2012 funding overview – http://blog.techfiltered.co…. We provide detailed funding activity monthly here: http://www.techfiltered.com…What do you think? 

    1. Dale Allyn

      I’ll follow it for a while and see how it feels. Thanks for sharing it here. If you stay away from the S.V. drama and gossip crap I’ll stick around. 😉 Good luck to you on your project. 

      1. TechFiltered

        Cool, thanks Dale!

  84. Lucas Wilk

    I highly recommend reading this anti-news consumption manifesto entitled Avoid News. In a nutshell, news is mostly sugar for your mind. http://dobelli.com/wp-conte… 

  85. Koslow

    Like Fred. I just visit them and read, click, read, follow, read, and go wherever the web takes me. Ever since the conception of the 24hour news network, getting the newsworthy unbiased news without any spin has been a challenge. The noise is overwhelming. We will approach that point where their is so much information, and so many agendas, that we won’t know what to trust. 1984 yo.WSJ Android App – Gobal economics/business/politicsBBC Andriod – Different perspective, same topics, love their app.Al Jazeera – When I’m feeling adventurous. Watching the tanks and riots on the streets of Egypt LIVE was incredible….TechCrunch – TechYahoo.com – Pop culture/domestic news AVC.com & Chinalawblog.com to stay on my game.Chrisbrogan.com –  Perspective.Wikipedia.com – To see how deep the rabbit hole really goes….. I can spend hours on here once an article from another source peeks my curiosity.

  86. brmore

    Ditto. Simple, but it works. 

  87. DanielHorowitz

    Hey Fred -Pretty much the same as you…(Twitter +…)Although, I get the hackernews twitter feed? Sports is interesting, I can get a feed on my team, but I have broader interest, so I have to go to ESPN…I check techmeme, because I want to see more, not just what’s in my twitter feed. (And my twitter feed doesn’t scale that well. I will miss things I am interested in.)  To what extent do you think twitter puts us in kind of a bubble? Info is based on whom we follow. This can provide a very biased view. Can we use a bit more serendipity?

    1. fredwilson

      I follow a broad range of folks for that very reason.

      1. Emily Merkle

         great way to meet people you otherwise might not.

      2. Don Daszkowski

        Fred… I understand that you may follow a broad range of folks on Twitter and I assume you follow experts in certain different categories of news but aren’t you then dependent on these users for your news? With all of the technology that exists tapped into the Twitter API I feel more and more people could become recipients of information on Twitter rather than contributors. It is very easy to connect my Twitter feed to apps like Flipboard and then just become a recipient and contribute less and less to the Twitter community. Do you ever think this can become an issue?( Disclosure: I am the founder of a social news network http://www.Comunitee.com

  88. Nick Grossman

    My morning news starts out w/ a saved set of tabs in chrome (via the Tab Cloud extension), that looks like this: http://screenshots.wrkng.ne… Google reader, twitter, g+, hn, reddit, techmeme, tumblr

  89. Mike Rossi

    Twitter almost exclusively. By following a really solid group of people you don’t really need anything else. 

  90. Druce

    Ha! thanks for the link love for linkfest.com . Still trying to figure out the product-market fit, so appreciate any thoughts from anyone.I think the most innovative news apps out there are reddit and Flipboard. Reddit because of the incredible engagement and user moderation.  After using reddit, and seeing how the good stuff rises to the top and crap gets filtered, it’s hard to understand how most comment forums can still be so crappy.If you customize Flipboard on your iPad with a good set of newsfeed subscriptions and Twitter follows, it’s a really incredible user experience, esp. for non-techies.A lot of stuff going on in this space, customized news aggregators like news.me, paper.li, Summify (acquired by Twitter), mobile apps like Flipboard, Pulse, Zite.I wrote a longer blog post a while back on best practices for investors to stay on top of news with social media and more advanced Web techniqueshttp://blog.streeteye.com/b… (Apologies if this gets duped, posted earlier from Disqus beta, didn’t see it here)

    1. fredwilson

      linkfest is great

  91. Joshua Cyr

    Twitter for breaking news.  Even local.  When our local Police Chief was killed yesterday twitter was afire with news long before much detail were available on any news channel.  Much of the news got to the media through twitter too. http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/…That said, for broad news I think Prismatic is pretty interesting as it pulls from my social sources and interests.  http://getprismatic.com

    1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

      LOCAL NEWS FOR TWITTER BIG OPPORTUNITY.BUT IT ONLY GOOD FOR IT BECAUSE NOTHING ELSE BETTER.THAT NOT BE TRUE FOREVER.

    2. Alexander Close

      Totally for local too. The other day 3 fire trucks screeched by on the street.  I looked up a local twitter account that tweets out a scanner.  Instant news.

    3. Trejdify

      True! Our police officers here in Sweden are using Twitter to communicate with the people with an interesting result. A couple of weeks ago, they did actually prevent a woman from committing suicide with the help of twitter. Read the full story here: http://blog.habrador.com/20…You also often find stories which doesn’t appear in the regular newspaper – such as the woman who called the cops when she found a rat in her apartment or the guy with a Porsche who got his car-door teared of by a truck  

  92. brendannee

    Prismatic consistently provides relevant news http://getprismatic.com/ – it has completely replaced Google reader for me.  Since it pulls news from twitter, I don’t have to spend as much time combing through links from my twitter followers as they end up showing up near the top on Prismatic.

    1. Sebastian Wain

      Sorry, but you can’t rely only on twitter for news.

  93. Mark Gannon

    I have about 50 different news/blogs in my RSS reader.  Akregator, which comes with the KDE desktop environment, is pretty awesome.

  94. Allison Keisman

     Fred – thank you for posting the question. I was eager to read the responses to see if anyone found the best curation/news aggregator tool.Over the past week, I set out to find the best curation/news aggregator tool that’s free or inexpensive to aggregate my news sources in one place for my own personal reading or to share on a blog that I’m thinking about creating around a curated topic.I came across these two blog posts with an exhaustive list of 30+ curation tools. A few people commented on some tools that aren’t even on these lists.http://bit.ly/HIETYYbit.ly/IzjHJ1Clearly, it’s a very fragmented industry with no clear winner. And, it’s so interesting to see how our news consumption behavior has changed based on the varied responses to this post. (It’s been a long time since the NYT and WSJ were my “go to” resources to become well-informed for the day.)Can anyone highly recommend one of the tools on these lists based on experience?  Thanks in advance!

  95. matthughes

    Is there any question Twitter is the place to be for ‘breaking news’ any more?I still rely on traditional media for the details: WSJ & NYT (online).For sports news, the league & team web sites have become the best resources:(You can see ESPN, Yahoo and newspaper outlets getting squeezed by these guys more and more…)NFL – NFL.comYankees – yesnetwork.comMLB – MLB.comNBA – NBA.com

    1. Mark Zohar

      You should check out TrendSpottr for emerging trending news. Check out this link to see top trending headlines, hashtags and sources for MLB: http://bit.ly/HDMWtd

  96. Gary Sev

    RSS reader for tech and VC newsTwitter for industry and competitive newsFew online tools for more competition infoWeb and apps like “World Newspapers ” for general news

  97. AntonioThonis

    To filter all the news that passes by on my twitter networks I use http://www.nineconnections.com on a daily basis to check the ‘top 10’ news in my networks. Actually i’ve added your @fredwilson:twitter account to my grid to deliver me VC/Tech news. That’s how I got here now btw 🙂

  98. ShanaC

    I’m looking for a change because I am unhappy with my NYTimes usage. Open to advice!

  99. Carlos Berlanga

    I use the Pulse News app and a folder with several bookmarks on my Android homescreen

  100. jason wright

    Where would like to see news about yourself presented to the world?

  101. Rosanne Marks

    I read The New York Times online and on my kindle and have a bunch of RSS feeds in google reader. I check in on Twitter a few times a day. If I didn’t stick with the Google reader, I’m afraid I’d never get any work done!

  102. Seph

    Breaking Stories = Twitter / Google NewsTech = Hacker News (seconded!)Venture / Business = I track a bunch of blogs and consume updates using Google Reader (this blog included)Foreign Policy / Economics / Defense = The Economist + Economist Blogs + Tom Ricks Best Defense Blog / Aviation Week’s DEWBest way to aggregate them all on the go that I’ve found so far: Flipboard on the bus, train, plane, restroom, anywhere I have five minutes.

  103. wilfra

    news.google.comreader.google.com (thats where I get your posts)news.ycombinator.comNew York Times daily email headlines

  104. Alex Gurevich

    If you are a heavy Twitter user, Prismatic (getprismatic.com) is the best personalized news aggregator that I have used. It is the primary way I consume news and I use it everyday. It was built by the best NLP/ML minds out there, and it appears that their personalization algorithms capture my interests the best of any one out there. I’m constantly finding super relevant news articles from sources I would normally miss and never see. The level of serendipitous discovery and delight is through the roof. They also make sharing and commenting around news content brain dead simple. This helps me engage around substantial content that I actually have an opinion/position on. I’m addicted!  

    1. Mark Zohar

      Alex, would be interested in your take on TrendSpottr. You can enter any topic or keyword you’re interested in and continuously receive the most trending content that has the highest viral potential. You can also use TrendSpottr to find the most trending hashtags and influencers that are driving a particular topic or term to trend. Our customers include some of the world’s leading news agencies and media companies, social marketing companies, large brands and analytics and big data companies. You can check us out at: http://trendspottr.com or, if you use HootSuite, you can install our app at http://hootsuite.com/appdir…. 

    2. DanielHorowitz

      Hey dude – I think you forgot to disclose that you are an investor in Prismatic. 

  105. leigh

    Wish I could create a techmeme, mediagazer and wesmirch on the fly for any subject i was interested in bc they are by far my absolute favorite quick hit on news for those three areas.

  106. jakelevine

    Really fascinating thread. I’ve been asking people this very question for the last 6 months working on News.me, and my conclusion is that we’re asking the wrong question.There are 237 comments below. I read through all of them and it’s clear that each contributor has his/her own hacked-together composite of sources for news. Different devices, software, networks, editors and curators, sitting on top of articles, videos, live blogs, and tweets, that add up to some ambient awareness of the stories and conversations that “matter” — that keep us “informed.”At the end of this line of inquiry, we struggle to find the common threads that tie this problem of “information overload” together. In fact, the problem seems so general that it borders on a simple reality (it has always been and always will be).The question that I’m most interested in is — why? Why do we read the news? To stay informed? Yes. But why do we want to stay informed? If you keep asking why, you eventually hear something like “to know what people are talking about,” “to know who to vote for,” “to know what decisions to make in my business.”In other words, to engage in some kind of social activity — to participate in a community (the dinner table, the water cooler, your town, your city, your democracy).We read the news to understand how we fit into the world around us. We read the news as a means to participating in the communities that we care about, that shape us and that we help shape. Twitter has become a favorite in the early adopter community because it makes this relationship explicit. We follow people who are members of a community that we care about, and within which we want to participate. We engage in conversations in that community, and content (“news”) is simple a tool around which that conversation takes place (a social object).Thanks for the great post and the even better thread. We’re in the middle of a fascinating transition.

    1. Jorge

      I think it’s more the discovery process of finding “better” things. You don’t know what you don’t know yet. You find all kinds of great services or products by being involved (or staying informed) with everything. We are, after all, the generation of curation. At least, that’s what Penelope Trunk thinks.

      1. William Mougayar

        Discovery and serendipity have taken a far greater role than seeking targeted news. I’m not sure if this is good or bad yet, but one thing I know is that it’s not a complete picture.

        1. laurie kalmanson

          it’s like the dictionary problem: how can i look up a word if i don’t know how to spell it? assisted search partially solves thatthe rabbit hole of the internet — starting here and winding up who knows where — enables serendipity for all sorts of things.

    2. Koslow

      We read the news to understand how we fit into the world around us. We read the news as a means to participating in the communities that we care about, that shape us and that we help shape.   That’s a great way of putting it. I read the news to form an idea of what the future will look like. So I can choose to adapt early, or change it.

      1. FAKE GRIMLOCK

        KNOW THINGS ONLY WAY TO KNOW SELF.

        1. jakelevine

          +++1

        2. Andrew Hoydich

          Reading about a gruesome death, a superb act of charity, some politician’s speech, the happenings in a third world country, etc. do not bring me any closer to knowing myself. A knowledge of myself may be what I’m searching for, but if the news is where I’m looking, then I’m looking in the wrong place.

      2. laurie kalmanson

        but news is also — and, i think, most importantly — knowing what you don’t know

        1. Koslow

          A little word play for you.“Imagine all the knowledge there is in this universe.” He stretches both his arms wide and twists his torso from side to side. “How much of the entire knowledge do you think is known to you? What percentage?” He asks. People raise their hands and at his signal guess loudly. The estimates range from enterprising and profound, zero to calculated 15 or 20%. “Ok…let’s consider this circle representing all the knowledge in the universe.” He draws a near perfect circle on the blackboard. “And now let’s say this portion represents what is known.” He draws a thin slice in the circle and looks back. “And let us say this represents what you know that you don’t know.” He carves another slice. He looks back again scanning the audience. Major portion of circle is still unexplained.

          1. laurie kalmanson

            this

    3. Luke Chamberlin

      Little bits of interesting information give me a small jolt of satisfaction. That’s why I keep hitting refresh on my browser. Like a mouse hitting the bar hoping for a pellet.

      1. laurie kalmanson

        lol. If you work at it, you can find amazing things. If you don’t, you’ll keep seeing the same ads for diapers long after your child is done with them.

    4. Robert Thuston

      Jake, I respectfully disagree. I think you haven’t hit the depth of the question by answering, “we read to engage in social activity”.  i enjoy the social engagement around reading on the internet, but it’s not why I read.  I believe reading is incredibly personal; we do it because we are selfish (those who are doing it right are looking for what they can use in our own lives), not because they want to engage in social activity.  I believe Emerson puts it best below, “we either read for antagonism or confirmation, it makes little difference which”.  “Emerson was an enormous reader all his life.  He read as he wrote, rapidly.  Like Montaigne, he did not pore.  He read actively as a writer does, looking for what he could use.  We either read for antagonism or confirmation, he once noted adding that it made little difference which.  Emerson kept repeating in his journal Coledridge’s quiet incitement to study, quantum scimus sunus – we are what we know.  The greater one’s knowledge, the more justified one’s self reliance” — Emerson, The Mind on Fire.

      1. jakelevine

        Really well said. *How we think about ourselves* operates in that grey area where “incredibly personal” and inherently social intersect. I think we’re talking about two sides of the same coin.

    5. fredwilson

      why is news.me only on ios? why isn’t it a web app?

      1. jakelevine

        We’re working on a web app now, running some experiments in very early beta. I’d be happy to grant access to the commenters on this thread in exchange for more of this kind of feedback. If you’re interested email me jake at news.me.

        1. fredwilson

          i’d love to try it. i was using it on my ipad but i use so many different devices throughout the day that the only way i can build something into my daily flow is for it to be a web app or an android app

          1. jakelevine

            Excellent — I’ll shoot you an email in a few days with details.

  107. sbmiller5

    1)  Twitter:  Replaced RSS for me.2)  Hometown news site (startribune)3)  Hacker New & TechCrunch (less and less TC)4)  ESPN5)  Have gone back and forth with attempts to read more global news from BBC to NY Times.  Don’t have this down yet.Oh, also still get 3 daily news emails focusing on specific industries, somehow i read everything i just listed every day…seems like too much reading to me.

  108. HN Reader

    Fred- I was in a similar spot. Reading is very important to me but is also my procrastination outlet. I fixed the habit by receiving content from select sources rather than compulsively entering their URLs seeking content.First, download Newsbar immediately: http://itunes.apple.com/us/…It’s the perfect RSS reader- try it. It updates live. I suggest deleting the news-source images so it takes up less space and color coding stories- tech news is orange to me. I’ve expanded my number of news sources and stopped wasting time since I’m only reading specific stories with interesting titles.News sources you may not have heard about: Jason Hirschhorn’s media redefined. One of Biz Stone’s favorites, now mine as well.http://feeds.feedburner.com…The Industry. Dom Leca, Sparrow’s founder, recommended it. Design-focused tech news.http://feeds.feedburner.com…Sports. Well known but not listed here in the comments- Grantland for long-form and Deadspin for the stories you share with your golfing buddies.http://search.espn.go.com/rhttp://deadspin.com/index.xmlI have a solid stable of economics/wall street blogs, let me know if you’d like the top 10.Politics: Little Green Footballs. Ex-conservative who’s ahead of the curve on Republican kerfluffleshttp://feeds2.feedburner.co…For fun, check out http://secondcitycop.blogsp… once or twice. An inside mole in Chicago’s police department does an excellent job reporting on government incompetence & corruption, real crime and how police feel, think and react, as well as Rahm Emanuel’s leadership & politicking. It’s really changed how I think about civil society.Etc.As a side note, blocking time-wasting websites was the single biggest boost to my productivity and ability to focus. Out of sight, out of mind. I still access them on my mobile in my real spare time.Terminal:sudo pico /etc/hosts127.0.0.1 reddit.com127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com127.0.0.1 huffingtonpost.com

  109. bsoist

    Oh no you didn’t Fred! It was only a few months ago that I stopped obsessing over the best way to consume news. You’re enabling me. Introducing me to Turntable was bad enough, and now this. Thanks!

    1. fredwilson

      i am happy to oblige!

  110. FlavioGomes

    Yeah Baby it’s Friday…and I want to buy all of you a round of virtual beers!!enjoy the weekend.

  111. DanBrewsterBarber

    The Week Magazine! They have great apps for iPad and iPhone as well but I still love my weekly publication coming through snail mail. Very well rounded news source that aggregates top stories from most major sources. I get stopped on the bus often by other Week readers and haven’t heard one person that has read it that doesn’t like it. 

  112. andyidsinga

    – morning:  NPR on commute days- afternoons: when I pick my kid up at school – thats news imho ;)- 1 or 2x a day : quickly scan igoogle – approx 60 blogs – save a few to instapaper.- evening: twitter and other sources coming via flipboard- evening: 2 or 3 times a week via Stewart and Colbert- weekend mornings: dig through stuff staved on instapaperI dropped TV news downers several years ago – now I just enjoy watching Jon Stewart make fun of them 🙂

  113. FAKE GRIMLOCK

    HACKER NEWS NOT DINOSAUR FRIENDLY.

  114. NICCAI

    My response to people when they roll their eyes about twitter…”Hey, it’s my newspaper.” Great in the morning, after dinner, pairs well with a cup of coffee.

    1. Emily Merkle

       similar but not the same. Twitter is literally the newspaper. The news is always the news. Sources vary.

  115. leigh

    Scanning through these comments – it’s pretty incredibleI know it’s stating the obvious, but it wasn’t so long ago the 6pm news was our collective main source and CNN was considered innovators.The pace of the news business being disrupted is simply staggering.

  116. Jennifer McFadden

    Twitter. Period.

  117. Emily Merkle

    I literally dove into Twitter in the past 48 hours; impressed and confused. Retweet is still my sweet spot. I have a blog and as of today – I have something worth saying and worth hearing.You decide.Privacy is huge. How / to who / with who this issue is spun; marketed; advertised; etc. will change the world. Let’s be responsible and break the down, debate, think. It is not Us v. Them / Entrenched v. Insurgent. It is and can be Us by Us for Us.

    1. Trejdify

      The problem with Twitter is the spam – I think we need something of a combination of Twitter and Reddit. Ive tried to follow people on Twitter who are interested in economy – but Ive always been drowned in information overload.

      1. Emily Merkle

        Curate it. One by one basis. Moderate your own individualized flow

  118. howardlindzon

    For markets I go to abnormalreturns.comand stocktwits.com/blogs and the @stocktwits:disqus stocktwits.com/stockwits streamI use twitter and techmeme and thats enough news for me.

    1. fredwilson

      I tried to find a logged out stocktwits public streamDoes that exist?

  119. laurie kalmanson

    what i loved about magazines and newspapers growing up was the unexpected; the stories journalists called “didjas” — the early version of something going viral, when someone read something and had to say, “didja see this?””didja” stories could be anything amazing; scientists claiming that dinosaurs are ruling other planets, pictures from space, a cat rescued from a tree.”the filter bubble” is the opposite of that; it shows us what we already want to know, not what we don’t know, based on our digital trails.digital surprise and digital delight happen, but you have to defeat the machine to get them.

  120. laurie kalmanson

    news in 1961: cat auditions (a precursor of lolcats, when going viral meant someone saying, “didja see that?”)http://pinterest.com/pin/22…

  121. laurie kalmanson

    trusted networksyou made me write a blogposthttp://lauriekalmanson.blog…

  122. laurie kalmanson

    A continuum of news: World War III begins World War III ends Science did something awesome Science did something awesome that directly affects you or someone you care about Today’s winning lottery number in another state Today’s winning lotter number in your state A new book is published by an author you follow A new album is released by a band you follow A rare first edition that you’ve always wanted for your collection is available It’s your child’s birthday

  123. Nicolas Mottet

    My reading activities can be broken down in 2 buckets:1) Education – reading “best of class” business articles. Because the best education resources are hard to find, I have created my own aggregation site: http://www.medony.com to list the best links in tech, entrepreneurship and product management.2) News – RSS aggregation of 5 different sites or random visits to techmeme, techcrunch or business insider.

  124. josegonzalezdamico

    (In order of check frequency)Twitter always, all day long in work breaks. Newsletters arriving to my email inbox. Prismatic. HN