Following the news—finding good sources and staying up to date—can be really difficult, for a number of reasons. To help get you started if you’re wondering where to go to find what’s important, I’ll share what I do, and list a couple extra suggestions as well.
My favorite way to follow the news is by email—I’ll explain why in a moment. There are a couple of news sources I follow by RSS, but for the main part, I follow news by Facebook and by email. By the way, do not rely on Facebook and Google to be the curators of your news. They have control over what you see and what perspectives you’re exposed to—and don’t be fooled into thinking they don’t actively censor and influence what gets the publicity. However, you can use your news feed to follow good news sites, and I do that for a few select sources.
However, the best method I’ve found for staying current is actually email. I have four basic guidelines for news sources. First, it has to be reliable (we all want this, but sometimes it’s hard to know what is and what isn’t). Second, I prefer that it be from a conservative standpoint. There’s no such thing as objective news; so why not read stuff I know is coming from people who share at least a similar worldview? Third, it has to be affordable. I don’t like to pay for news; I probably could be convinced to, and there are a couple of sites I wouldn’t mind giving support to; but, in general, I like to follow the news as inexpensively as possible. And finally, it has to be accessable. What I mean by that is that I prefer to get news updates while doing as little as possible to find the news! In other words, I don’t want to navigate to a webpage if I could just have news updates show up in my email inbox each morning. Yes, I know that sounds lazy—I like to think of it as efficient. I already do a million different things a day, so I think it’s helpful to catch the news mid-stride while I’m doing something I already do every day, like check my email, and, less often, check my Facebook news feed. So, in an effort to help you get started on your search for reliable, conservative (mostly), affordable, and accessable news sources, here’s my list of recommendations.
Christian Daily Reporter is a Drudge-style news aggregator that collects news particularly relevant to Christians. Unfortunately, there’s no way to subscribe to anything, so you have to actually navigate to the page to get updates; this is a major downside in my book, but I respect their reasons for the format and, for this particular site, it’s well-worth it.
The Daily Wire is probably the overall best conservative news site right now. I follow them primarily on Facebook, but you can also subscribe to their RSS feed.
The Daily Signal was started by the Heritage Foundation and “provides policy and political news as well as conservative commentary and policy analysis.” I follow them on Facebook and get the headlines by email.
The Patriot Post is another conservative news source you can follow via Facebook or RSS, but I usually just read their email digests.
The New Paper is a great email summary of headlines.
Those are the five I really use regularly. Below are a few more suggestions if you want the fullest headline exposure.
I also get the First Draft in my email. It’s headline updates from the New York Times that summarizes the headlines of the past 24 hours. It’s fairly objective, rather than being overtly conservative, but the summaries are helpful.
Politico Playbook is another daily email update of curated headlines.
The Skimm is my odd one out on this list (well, and the Hustle as well). The Skimm is specifically designed for female millennials, and it also definitely leans left; but it’s a good daily email summary of important headlines, and it’s rather humorous at times as well.
The Hustle is another email subscription, but this one primarily focuses on the tech world, and typically has one topic per email rather than a list of headlines.
HotAir is another conservative (though not as classically conservative as I would prefer) news source. I used to get the Townhall email updates but don’t anymore because they’re a little hard to follow, but it’s still a fair option.
Alliance Defending Freedom has helpful email updates on issues specifically related to religious liberty.
SRN News—subscribe to the RSS feeds of your choice, or get updates in your email. I find the political cartoons especially enjoyable.
Dr. Albert Mohler (Christian theologian and cultural commentator) has a great podcast called The Briefing. I get the podcast updates in my email, which contains the topic headlines, and if there is something specific I want to know more about, I’ll listen to that episode.
It’s also good to keep up with the local news in your area as well, which for me would be PoliticsPA, The Morning Call, Commonwealth Foundation, GoErie, Erie News Now, and YourErie. Of course, you could also just pick up an actual, physical newspaper—crazy! In fact, good arguments can be made that we ought to care more about state and local news and politics than we should national, but that’s a topic for another time.
There’s much more to say here, and there are many more sources we could recommend, such as those from a more narrow perspective, or which focus on narrower issues, as well as those sites and writers who aren’t specifically news or policy commentators, but are valuable when they do touch on an issue in the news. But, I hope this list will at least help get you started on the search for more awareness, insight, and understanding of current events.
What about you? What other sources would you recommend for quality news?
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