Anyone know of a curated news app that’s diverse like Apple News seems to be, but offers more tweaking or a more narrow focus? Gladly would pay a subscription fee if it works the way I want!
I’ve never found one so I’ll be interested in what others may suggest. Today I get my news from RSS feeds via NetNewsWire, news.google.com, Techmeme River, and a number of U.S. and foreign news channels on YouTube.
I’m evaluating Artifact and so far it’s not bad. it’s still in the testflight beta testing.
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No joke is Flipboard still a thing? I remember that was highly customizable back in the day.
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Perhaps an RSS reader would be best to achieve whatever topic focus you are seeking?
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+1 on Artifact. Made by Instagram founders who plan to make it the TikTok of Text.
Very good content and a fantastic inclusive community.
I have thoughts on this but I should provide a small disclaimer; I’m not saying this is what you should do or even that I’m “right” in any capacity. It’s just what has been working for me the past few weeks.
I subscribe to two newspapers. Being a Canadian I subscribe to the Globe and Mail, and then I enjoy reading the NY Times for the (albeit left leaning) US view. Of course I browse other sites like the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and I try to let some stories find me by opening Apple News once in a while. I should also mention that I’ve taught at a post-secondary institution lately, and I still have my student email address from University, so while I do subscribe to those sources – I pay something like $10 a month in total. I don’t have excessive news subs, monetarily speaking.
So for years I’ve used RSS Readers. Usually Reeder, but I’ve dabbled with Unread as well. I love the fact that these services usually strip out the ads, and the articles are in a font of my choosing, with a background of my choosing etc. They make reading an article a great experience. But here’s the thing. I was finally honest with myself a few weeks back and came to a realization. The “firehose” nature of subbing to RSS feeds means I feel like I have a constant need to keep up. Maybe it’s been two days since I opened the app and I find myself staring down the barrel of 304 unread articles. This presents two issues:
- The feeling of overwhelm
- Nothing is prioritized. Articles about the conflict in Israel are mixed in with fluff pieces, and it’s just a wall of headlines.
As someone who is trying to use his device less, I didn’t like feeling like I have to constantly keep checking my RSS app to stay on top of things. I also found myself skimming headlines and rarely clicking on an article to – what’s that thing we do? – read it.
I hear the arguments about the lack of prioritization being an asset. Why would we want the man feeding us headlines, RSS lets us choose what’s important on our own. Well yes, but at the same time, if a major conflict breaks out in the world, I want this to be front and centre.
I also find the RSS articles are often missing photos, interactive sections or photo galleries.
So after all that, what has my solution been?
I downloaded the apps from the Globe and Mail and the NY Times. Once or twice a day when I get a free second I will open each one and scroll through the top headlines, maybe check on some opinion writers I like.
This greatly reduces my anxiety in feeling like I have to keep up. I keep Reeder around for a few tech blogs and other sources that update more like 3 times a week instead of 180 times a day. I’ve found this new system to be a great relief and burden off my back.
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Unfortunately, not for a Mac poweruser. iOS only.
A tangential answer might be subscribing to The Economist. I say this in relation to the firehouse nature of some services. The Economist gives a one a week perspective, providing a considered reporting of the news, not an hourly reaction to stuff.
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You described the tension perfectly. I love News Explorer RSS reader for how easy to read it makes 90%+ of the articles. It formats them in reader mode/dark mode automatically. But there is a constant feeling of being behind. Two days of my not using it means over 500 unread articles.
And, RSS readers don’t curate articles. My main source of news is Google News. The problem with that is (1) no reader mode (they want you to see the ads), (2) no dark mode, and (3) it doesn’t integrate with the Apple ecosystem (opening an article in your browser means it will open in Chrome, not Safari, with no way to change it).
I have been trying out Artifact as a substitute for Google News, and so far, so good, but it’s pretty clear they sell your info and there’s no way to stop that, despite what it says in their privacy policy. I’m sure Google News does the same thing. I still prefer a news aggregator to RSS feed readers and reading individual publications.
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I use RSS but don’t subscribe to any feed from news outlets, exactly due to the aforementioned problem of being overwhelmed by unread counts. The alternative I found is to select one (and only one) prestigious newspaper and read its daily front page. The newspaper you choose doesn’t need to be perfect or unbiased (which is almost impossible); it only needs to be journalistic enough to report comprehensively and accurately. Then I supplement its coverage with articles elsewhere that provide contrasting or more in-depth points.
Even for some tech news outlets, I do subscribe with RSS (e.g., The Verge, MacRumors, etc.) I don’t burden myself with the Sisyphean goal of reading through them, as I’m pretty sure that if I missed an update that was too important to be missed, it would eventually resurface here or there, in this or that way.
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Thanks for replies so far! I do use an RSS reader but what I envision is something like Apple News where it’s curated, I can browse it on my iPad while eating breakfast etc. I was going to check out Artifact but if they sell my info, nope. That’s why I feel like a subscription model may be better. Though who aside from Apple can you trust with privacy anymore?
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I’m not sure there is anything about me that hasn’t been leaked multiple times. But I have data on both Apple and Google servers and trust both equally.
With Whom Does Google Share Information? Google may share information about you with advertisers, business partners, sponsors, and other third parties . However, we only divulge aggregate information about our users and will not share personally identifiable information with any third party without your express consent.
### Privacy Policy – Privacy & Terms – Google
Apple may share personal data with Apple-affiliated companies, service providers who act on our behalf, our partners, developers, and publishers, or others at your direction . Apple does not share personal data with third parties for their own marketing purposes.
The problem with any of these apps, including Apple News and Artifact, are the ads. It makes the reading experience horrible. I’d rather just go to the corresponding website with my ad blocker on.
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That’s what I do as well and the main reason that I do not use news agencies apps as they bypass my ad blocking rules. Indeed rarely, if ever, use any app-ification of a web site for the same reason.
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“Community curated” content is a strategy: there are rss feeds for the top posts of a given subreddit (ex: top scoring links : apple), I also use feeds from this repository to get the top posts from Hacker News each day.
To counteract the firehose of RSS, I don’t use an RSS reader at all, but a (now free) service called Mailbrew, which sends the user RSS digests via email at a cadence of one’s choosing (I do once a day, each morning). Each morning, I skim the headlines, add anything interesting to my read-it-later pile. If I miss a day (or a week), then there’s no build up. I can just return (or not) to old emails if I wish.
Alongside Mailbrew, I subscribe to email newsletters from my NPR station, substack, Macrumors weekly roundup, etc. So in a sense, my email client is my primary news app. I have all my “news” related items in their own focused bucket because I take advantage of the Feed in HEY. I assume Sanebox also would have the ability to set up this sort of foldering. Headlines that strike my interest from any newsletter, I pull into Goodlinks, and do all my reading from there. I like the separation of where news comes in (email) from where my focused reading happens (Goodlinks).
Lastly, I’ll mention: The ads within the Apple News app can all be blocked at the DNS level by a service called NextDNS. They have easy to configure apps for Mac, iOS, and iPadOS. I’ve only ever needed what’s covered under NextDNS’s free tier, but their annual fee is quite affordable. It makes Apple News+ such a more pleasant experience. I stay away from the “Today” page in AN+ and mostly stick to the weekly magazines.
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I also use the Economist as my primary news application. It does not have investigative reporting or sensationalist stuff and mostly provides analysis and context on the news. I also find its podcasts very useful and enjoy the fact that they record their articles in real people’s voices. I will often start reading something on the phone/app and will switch to audio/carplay while running an errand. Unfortunately, they still include one ad in each story even after the very hefty subscription price but 1Blocker filters that every time.
I also check out Press Reader as I get access to lots of content on it through the library.
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I don’t use RSS for news generally. I don’t see how we can solve the “content prioritisation” issue (although surely there is some machine learning that could be deployed in these apps: “hey, you often choose articles about this topic first, here are similar things in your feeds”).
TL;DR I solved my news problem by subscribing to two global news emails and an industry specific newsletter
I subscribe to the daily email from International Intrigue, which is a daily global news update written by former diplomats. Obviously it doesn’t cover national/local news, and American politics rarely gets mentioned unless it’s specifically relating to international things, but as I am not American, and British political news is a condemned sinking vessel that no sane person should actively seek to watch (caveat: I have colleagues monitoring and providing summaries on this), I find this newsletter suffices for me. As it’s daily, it moves quickly with emerging news stories (and do we really need to know about breaking news as it happens anyway? Probably not.).
I also subscribe to Future Crunch, which does a weekly round-up of positive global news. It doesn’t include “breaking news” really, but it usually has a wide scope and is interesting to read. There’s a whole section in this week’s update about how great the U.S. economy is doing with various stats, etc.
Finally, I am fortunate that my sector has an independent journalist writing a newsletter gathering all the news from my sector (including the paywalled news by our industry news orgs). It is well worth the cost of the sub, and I do recommend people look to see if anyone is doing the same for their sector as it basically saves you hours of work tracking this stuff yourself!
I would actually prefer that all three of the above were available as RSS (as I have said many times, I HATE email - and International Intrigue is a daily one!), but I put up with them because they solve a lot of inconvenience for me.
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My local library allows free access to a number of news publications via the Pressreader app. I’ve been using it to download and read the local paper on my iPad every morning. Will occasionally read other papers and news magazines from other parts of the world. They also have The Economist for those who mentioned it.
I use RSS for my specialized interests (Macintosh, cartography, Tolkien,…) but never for actual “news.” Since giving up televised news 20 years ago, I’ve tried subscribing to the paywalled New York Times and The Guardian, both of whose reporting I respect, and reading more news from NPR and BBC, but always found the use of a single source – or the sequential use of a series of sources – was not giving me the variety that I value.
For the last fifteen months, I have subscribed instead to Inkl. I’ve guided it a bit by telling it that I want to see “fewer stories like this” (mostly those about “celebrities” I may or may not ever have heard of before, but of whose lives I really have zero interest) – but on the whole I’ve been very pleased at its balance of articles from reputable sources. I let it auto-renew a few months back, and I expect I’ll do so again.
Oh, and no ads!
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