[SarikayaKomzin]

I worked in the news industry for about 5 years, and, once I left the 24/7 cycle, I sort of instinctively understood the half-life of information and began to stop paying attention to the news. I was later pleasantly surprised to see this concept formalized in a few places, notably from Morgan Housel[1], Nassim Taleb[2] and Samuel Arbesman[3]. These men’s writing really crystallized what I had learned from experience but didn’t have a framework to explain.

It is of course a privilege to ignore the news completely. I don’t advocate totally unplugging. But once you better understand the material value of information, you can make better decisions about what to consume.

[1]http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowled...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge

[fakedang]

I'm in an autocratic nation right now, and I just realized how much relaxed it is reading the news (not that I support autocracy in any way). It honestly stymies me how much bandwidth political discussions have taken over the years on the news spectrum in most democratic nations, regardless of development status. On the contrary, news in open autocracies seem to be more of the local type, focused on hyper local issues. And then there are the poser democracies such as Russia, Egypt or China, where news is highly nationalized dogshit, focused on how their enemies are bad, we are good and our government is the greatest.

[jamestimmins]

Aaron Swartz's blog post 'I hate the news' is a classic of this genre

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews