[coffeefirst]

I think you have the problem right but the answer wrong.

You're overexposed to the firehose of noise and want to get away from that but still be reasonably informed. This is a good idea.

If you can pick one or two high quality publications (one local, one national/global) to check once per day (many have really good newsletters), you'll probably be pretty happy with that balance.

HN is not the right tool for this because it is a tech forum that sometimes discusses news.