I currently “pay” for three news sources: two of those directly and one of those I get through work. As a general rule, I try to stay away from news involving the Tomato in Chief and the Musky Circus, but unfortunately, a lot of this nonsense ends up affecting me directly, so I need to read about those things more often than not.

Wall Street Journal: This is the one I get through work. The WSJ has been my replacement for the NYT for about a year now, and it’s been working well for “what’s important” and to some extent international news, at least the blurbs. The app works well and doesn’t bother me as much as the NYT app, and I can quickly scan what’s happening. I usually go through it a couple of times a week. There’s more to explore there, but since most of my interests are in technology, I find that I get those elsewhere - see below.

Wired: I subscribed to Wired about half a year ago, including their printed magazine. They are a bit messy in terms of their app, printed magazine, and their website (the website works, and the app gives PDFs of their printouts), but once I got it sorted out, it’s easy to follow their RSS feeds and then to the full articles. The Wired covers technology as a global topic with different flavors and trends and does in-depth interviews with known people. I also like their YouTube TechSupport channel, where they bring different experts to answer common questions people ask on the internet.

404 Media: I just decided to renew my subscription yesterday after being on the fence for the weekend. In the end, I decided that their investigative and independent journalism is worthy of support, even if I end up rolling my eyes at some of their articles these days. 404 usually covers scandals, and they go deep into how AI makes the world worse and how. As such, they become more of an activist outlet, and I feel somewhat out of place as a person who uses AI both for work and play. Still, the kind of raw and honest journalism they do is something unparalleled anywhere else, and I’d recommend you give them a read if you’re into tech and AI.

Other worthy mentions:

Ground News: I played with a subscription for a while, but the free version is also fine. Ground news is not an outlet but more of a spectrum of news. They take a story and match it across different media outlets, trying to cover both right-wing and left-wing sources. While sometimes I’m not sure how they categorize their sources, the sheer number of links to different stories available is good in itself and gives you a bigger idea of the facts, especially if you want to research something. It’s a good place to check out and add to your knowledge arsenal.

AP News: In general, they replaced NPR and BBC for me after I decided these last two tend to be more political than I liked. AP News has a free app that comes with ads, but you still get a quick overview of “what people are talking about,” mostly so you can dig in deeper later if you want. They rarely go deep enough to be worth a sit-through, especially with their ads.