How I'm consuming news during quarantine

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Unpopular truth: The news is a big part of my life. 🙊

I joke often that I’ve become my dad, who was as serious of a news-watcher as one can imagine while I was growing up (and continues to be!). Like him, I now begin my day with the news, look forward to breaks along the day when I can catch up with it, and end my day with… you guessed it… the news. In the year 2020 when life seems like an obstacle course of emergencies near and far, this can be a vexatious way to lead one’s life. Add to that my particular predilection for the sub-genre of political news and you can only imagine.
Hence, a strategy.

The hope with sharing my own news consumption lifestyle is that it provides a template for you, if your attempts at staying informed (on a small or big scale!) have become a negative experience. While the COVID-19 public health crisis has the world in its grips, each of us is likely dealing with unprecedented mental and physical health challenges. Now more than ever, it’s imperative that the one thing that will help the most- staying informed- does not become one in itself.

  1. Little to no cable TV news.
    I don’t know about you, but I literally get nothing from watching the news on cable TV anymore. Every time I’ve tried, I've found myself thank-you-nexting for the next news channel until I run out of patience and give up. I’ve learned to just save myself the trouble and avoid it entirely, save for the occasional tidbits packaged cleverly as comic relief on the late night shows.

  2. My daily routine involves reading the news.
    It is an unchangeable fact that my brain absorbs the written word better than most anything else. So I just feed it the news as it prefers. I fancy myself a post-retirement future when I’m that grandma who spreads the newspapers out over morning coffee, but until then, I’ll be scrolling all of the tabs on my screens like the next millennial.

    Here’s a quick run-through of my regular weekday:

    • AM: I quickly browse the news app on my phone, but not before I’ve gotten ready for the day and feel mentally prepared. Screen time before then is a big no-no.

    • Lunch time: This is where I consume the bulk of my news, mostly because on a typical workday, it’s when I have the most time to process it. My routine digital news sites’ circuit over 30-40 minutes looks something like this and goes from heavy to light in format: The NY times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Atlantic, Mother Jones, Slate, The New Yorker (a cartoon a day…), Vox, Crooked Media (they have a really fun and digestible newsletter that I LOVE!).

      This seems like a lot, I know, but keep in mind that I’m usually only browsing the headlines on all of the sites and only clicking through to the ~4-5 articles that I feel particularly invested in. Repeated exposure to the biggest topics of the day from multiple sources guards against bias & misplaced prioritization while offering a range of perspectives that I appreciate. And between all of the sources, there’s little that slips through and gets lost.

    • PM: Sometime in the later half of my day, I take a ‘fun’ news break. Society & culture on The Cut and Refinery 29, perhaps some home hacks on Apartment Therapy or wanderlusting on Travel + Leisure.

    • Finally, I catch the main headlines on The Hindu- hot off the press as the day’s beginning in India just as mine’s shutting down. I just make sure to do this well ahead of my screen-time curfew at night.

  3. As intense as this routine may seem to be, headlines and short-copy articles still only scratch the surface. Throughout the week, I pepper in a variety of other media formats that offer deeper dives into topics that I care about.

    • NPR- I’m an ardent admirer of public radio programs and make sure to tune in whenever I’m doing work that allows me to split my mental bandwidth. On my local NPR station (PSA for my Bay Area peeps!), I love Forum, Political Breakdown and Marketplace for discussions on local issues among national and global ones. Pre-quarantine, these shows aired during my commute and I so miss that exclusive listening time now! I also listen to much-loved nationally aired shows like Fresh Air and Science Friday whenever possible.

    • Podcasts : In general, my podcast subscription list deserves a post of its own, but the world of news podcasts is admittedly one that I haven’t had the time or bandwidth in recent years to explore at all. I SO want to, though, because it seems like a much more creative pool to choose from! A couple of news-themed favorites that I do work into my week are by Crooked Media- Pod Save America and Pod Save the World feel like sitting down with friends. Post-quarantine, my commute-less life has made my podcast-listening erratic, but I do my best to catch up on long walks or during tedious chores/work.

    • Social media: Increasingly during quarantine, I’v relied on Twitter and Instagram for quick updates. Twitter is surely the most current medium for news, but tread carefully as its as full of noise as it is of news. I’ll often catch a trending topic on twitter and then head elsewhere for the main gist. On Instagram, however, I have two favorite follows that I 100% recommend-
      @jessicayellin does amazing 2-3’ summaries that are clear, crisp and concise. I often feel like her updates alone could be enough to carry one through the COVID-19 crisis.

      @hithapalepu’s #5SMARTREADS series on her IG Stories is a breath of fresh air! I look forward to her selection of thoughtful, smart (duh.) and informative articles every day.

    • Deep dive news shows: John Oliver, of course.

  4. Lastly and most importantly, I take off from the news when it’s necessary. Weekends most often are news-light, but I’m not above a cold turkey cut-off from the news for a stretch if it’s what helps. I’ve definitely taken it easy during this WFH period, checking my Instagram faves and listening to the radio at most on certain days. News fatigue is a real thing, and it’s best to prevent than treat it as with any other condition.

And that’s everything I can think of re: my news consumption! If you’re still reading, you must love and value the news as much as I do- hi, fellow weirdo. I hope this helps re-evaluate how you source and process the information that’s important to you, so that it can truly be the food for thought that it’s meant to be. If you have any cool things to add to this list, please let me know so we can share resources during this difficult time!

Thank you for reading and have a great week ahead!
XO Sushmitha :)