My Daily News Diet: Choosing the Good

I’m a BYU fan. As such, I like to keep a close watch on the teams (primarily basketball and football, though I follow all of the sports now and then). And in my effort to know as much about the team as I can, I started turning to fan sites to get all the insider scoops. I have a slate of websites I typically check every day, and I added cougarboard to that slate about two years ago. I’ll right click on a folder of bookmarks and select “open all in new window,” then quickly scan through the headlines of each to see what’s going on in the world. Currently those bookmarks include the following:

• CNN (national and international news)
• The Deseret News (Utah news)
• The Daily Bulldog (local news)
• The Lewiston Sun Journal (Maine news)
• The Bangor Daily News (Maine news)
• Gamespot (video game news and reviews)
• Mythicspoiler (upcoming Magic the Gathering cards)
• Magic the Gathering’s News Feed (does what it says on the tin)
• Powerschool (to check on my kids’ grades)
• Weather Underground (to check on the weather)
• FiveThirtyEight (political and statistical tidbits)
• ESPN (sports)
• Cougarboard (BYU news)
• ChannelFireball (Magic the Gathering strategy)
• MTGGoldfish (Magic the Gathering strategy)

In addition to those news sites, I have a series of blogs I check every day as well, through Feedly. Deal sites, library news, technology news, movie news, and generally interesting sites I enjoy. I could write a blog post about that on a different day. I also follow some subreddits.

But after I check through those sites, I feel like I’m brought up to speed on what’s happening in the areas of the world I’m curious about. I think the sites you turn to every day says a lot about you as a person. Looking over that list, you can draw some conclusions. Fox News isn’t on there, but neither is MSNBC. Then again, I know some conservatives view CNN as liberal leaning. (But hey, some conservatives would view the Pope as liberal leaning too. I’m not worried about some conservatives.) I don’t read the Salt Lake Tribune, because I feel like they have an axe to grind, both against BYU and the Mormon church, though I will read them from time to time to try and get a fair view of what’s going on with an issue in Utah, just as I will turn to Fox News sometimes to hear what’s coming from that corner of the interwebs.

Clearly I like Magic the Gathering (everybody needs a hobby), and I care about video games and some other general interest things. I like to be well informed.

Today, I cut Cougarboard out of that list of bookmarks. I did it for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, I’ve found the bulk of their “reporting” to be flat out inaccurate. They treat rumors and news pretty much equally. They do have some scoops now and then on what players or coaches are up to, but not often enough to warrant a daily consumption of their posts. Secondly, they’re very negative, always complaining about the teams, regardless if those complaints have any real merit. And so I just asked myself: is this something I really want to fill my life with, day in and day out? The answer was no. (In a similar vein, I used to check Drudge Report daily, because I wanted to know what his adherents were coming up with. I cut it fr0m my news diet, because I found it very biased, and often inflammatory.)

So what are the sites you go to every day? Are there any you’ve added or removed recently? Why? Inquiring minds want to know . . .

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