Realistically, almost all of the real-time discussion happens on Reddit, Twitter, and in various private chat groups (Telegram, etc). But you have to be savvy about sorting the shilling and nonsense from actual useful information.
If you are interested in looking at what reddit is saying about any coins you are researching you can try http://bitreddit.com.
Disclosure: this is a side project I am working on to learn react.
From an investment or technical perspective? I'll assume investment.
I do it the hard way as the summaries often leave out a lot or bias facts. Especially mass media.
Start with the coin official site. If you like the pitch, skim the white paper. Abstract and conclusion tells you a lot.
You can learn a surprising amount from just the tone of the founders.
Next, check out the community. Usually Reddit or Slack. Read both sides, e.g. for ETH and ETC. As a general rule, don't invest in something until you know its downsides. If there are no downsides, then you don't understand enough about it.
There's a lot more advanced stuff out there (as you can see in the other comments) that I would touch on once I have a rough overview.
A lot changes in the crypto world month-to-month, and so forums like Reddit and Twitter are usually the best to stay up to date. Unfortunately, there's a lot of useless chunder on these forums you'll have to learn to filter to get access to the quality stuff.
Personally, I avoid the fanboys/girls and like following people who are more critical of the space. Because of this, I've discontinued following r/Bitcoin on Reddit (I'm sure there're smart people out there—there was just too much I didn't agree with and decided to leave).
I know this is more of a crypto pessimist crowd but I tend to agree with their views way more than the rest of the herd. I think they're a lot more rational and highlight some great things to look out for.
I would encourage you to fish for some of the rational optimists as well. If anyone has recommendations, I'm all ears!
I would recommend Naval Ravikant (@naval) and Nick Svabo (@NickSvabo4) as the smartest people I know who are heavily engaged in cryptocurrency professionally.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency
I took this last year and found it very informative