I have been looking for a while for a reliable, online, text-based, source of important (subjective, I know, but to me that doesn’t include sport or celebrities or what is on TV) UK and world news, with a focus on reporting rather than analysis.

At this point, I’ve basically given up; I don’t think that what I want exists, paid or free.

But do I need to read “the news” anyway?

I wonder what I really get from it, other than an increasing sense of despair and frustration.

I get updates from key primary sources, through a combination of RSS and urlwatch to monitor websites. I’m not concerned about missing a key regulatory or legislative update, which is important to me from a work point of view.

I subscribe to 404Media, which I enjoy, although a more UK-focussed version would be amazing.

I occasionally look at our local news site, when I can stomach the clickbait headlines. I think I’ve got more uBlock Origin filters set up for that site than for any other, in an attempt to make it usable. I’d rather hoped that there was a subscription option which does away with all the advertising, gives actually informative headlines and like, but no - it is an app-based offering, with an “ad-lite … experience”.

I can see what people are discussing in the fediverse, where my filters for most party politics are pretty effective. But predominantly I enjoy the fediverse as a place to chat and have fun, not to be exposed to “news”.

Having an appreciation of what is going on in the world, in a geopolitical sense, is also useful for my work, and that is a bit trickier. It is primarily for this that I’ve continued to read the BBC news, despite my increasing dissatisfaction with it.

But perhaps it is time - even for just a test period - for me to stop reading “news sites”, and see how I fare.