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Reading the print version of a newspaper isn't going to help, because they're just as guilty as anyone of putting up repetitions and very minor updates of the same few stories instead of actual, y'know, new things that have happened. Just look at what's on the NYT front page right now.

* "The Border Is Broken. And There's No Plan To Fix it." Yawn. This has been in heavy rotation for weeks. Also, poor grammar.

* "Black Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever" Super cool, but after the first thirty stories I saw about this I'd like to hear about some other scientific advance.

* "William Barr Testimony Highlights: Attorney General Says He Thinks ‘Spying Did Occur’ on Trump Campaign Video" Also on heavy rotation for days now.

* "Israel Election Live Updates: As Gantz Concedes, Netanyahu Set for Victory" OK, one out of four so far.

You get the idea. Google News is even worse.

* Trump urges inquiry into 'attempted coup' against him

* Israel Election: Netanyahu Appears Headed For Win In Close Race

* IRS commissioner "working on letter" in response to request for Trump tax returns

* Police investigating death of 20-year-old college student who collapsed at Hilton Head Island off-campus party

* The E.U. Seems Ready to Put Brexit on Ice. But for How Long?

* How Stephen Miller tightened his grip over Trump's immigration and border policy

Those are almost all retreads, again excepting the Israel election. Some are damn near duplicates of each other. It's as though even the most "modern" news sources are still stuck on one new headline per day. Every morning when I check in, there's 90% overlap with the previous day.

We're not being overwhelmed with news; we're being overwhelmed with olds. My own urgent quest is not for news that's slower or better according to some arbitrary notion of quality. I'll judge that for myself. All I ask is for news that's news.




> "The Border Is Broken. And There's No Plan To Fix it." Yawn. This has been in heavy rotation for weeks. Also, poor grammar.

That's a long form article about a variety of issues with the immigration system, from immigration courts to how migrants are detained. It's very informative. I read a lot on the subject and I found more than a few facts in here that I wasn't aware of.

> "William Barr Testimony Highlights: Attorney General Says He Thinks ‘Spying Did Occur’ on Trump Campaign Video" Also on heavy rotation for days now.

How has that been reported "for days now"? That quote is literally from his testimony earlier today.

> "Black Hole Image Revealed for First Time Ever" Super cool, but after the first thirty stories I saw about this I'd like to hear about some other scientific advance.

But it's not like the NYT has 30 stories about this, the fact that we have a lot of different news sources isn't a bad thing. Though you do have a point about a lack of scientific reporting


> That quote is literally from his testimony earlier today.

So if he repeats the same claim every day, NYT should displace something else to report on every instance?

No.


I wasn't aware that William Barr made this claim prior to the testimony, so it's news to me?


William Barr has never made that claim. And he went on to say, right after that quote, that the Justice Department is conducting an investigation into this. That's very big news! Trump tweeting about how Obama spied on him is very different than the Justice Department dedicating resources to investigating the FBI, Obama, and Hillary Clinton.


Let's say for the sake of argument that it qualifies as news. Does it change the overall argument that "news" outlets try to claim far too much of our attention for topics they've already saturated, in the process failing to bring new events to our attention? Or are we just sealioning here?


I think it depends. If you use NYT or WaPo or WSJ as your primary news source I don't believe you'll see duplicates (if you only pick one of those 3, obviously each of those papers will publish their own version of the same story), excluding editorials. To a lesser extent this is true with the CNN news site, if you exclude their opinion pieces and "Analysis" articles (which tend to just link to their actual news article and add the potential political ramifications. Not true journalism, but not really an editorial either). Though the same can not be said of the actual CNN TV channel, which I find nearly unwatchable because they rehash essentially the same information over and over. I can't comment much about other sources.

As for failing to bring new events to our attention, I totally agree. The 4 outlets I mentioned above don't give enough attention to international news, stuff that really is important. Even in domains that are heavily covered bits get left behind. Like a Trump-appointed federal judge for the Federal Court of Appeals who had never been a judge of any kind before (The BAR recommends at least 12 years of judge experience for that position, the nominee didn't even have their law degree for 12 years) and was an active member of a SPLC-recognized hate group (who was confirmed by the Senate, btw). I don't have a single news article about that one, which is an absolute shame.

I'm just not entirely sure what stories should be cut. Maybe it will come down to just having a better aggregation system and UI to discover and keep track of these stories.




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