I just look at the Wikipedia Current Events page [0]. It's possibly the most straight-to-the-point and least biased way I've found to just know what's going on. If you have any specific interests, there are similar sites. I've found Blue's News [1] to be great for a quick catch up on gaming.
My approach is different, don't know if better or worse: important news will eventually reach me, the rest is probably not important. This is excluding things I need to react quickly about, which are pretty much constrained to my job.