[harrall]

Average newspapers have average content.

But there are good newspapers just like they are good <any category of thing>.

Although good newspapers still have bias, but as a reader, you can correct for bias. You can’t correct for sloppy fact checking.

Like in archery, if you always land in the same spot, you can “reverse bias” the result back to bullseye. If you land all over the place, there’s nothing you can do.

The only problem is that good newspapers cost some money.

[rootusrootus]

In this conversation I keep seeing comments about good newspapers. I'd be interested in seeing a more specific discussion that debates which newspapers qualify as good. Everyone has their own opinion, but maybe a consensus would emerge.

Is it as easy as NYT? Or Economist? Or is that still slop and ProPublica is the standard? But even then, something like ProPublica is great for investigative journalism but less useful as a general source of information.

I'm happy to pay for a good source of news. But finding something that doesn't just look good, but is in fact actually good, that's my problem.

[Forgeties79]

I really like the economist for their various data points/graphs and such. Always very useful and quality in my experience. They are very good at displaying the data used to inform their pieces. It’s the analysis that can be all over the place depending on the topic at hand.

As others have mentioned I would consider ProPublica probably the gold standard right now

[harrall]

A good newspaper to me is one that regularly does their due diligence (fact checking, possibly considering things from several angles, giving background information) and has a consistent but reasonable bias. NYT and The Economist are very good ones.

It’s extremely hard suggesting newspapers to an online audience. People don’t easily separate bias and accuracy — they think they are correlated.

Bias and accuracy are unrelated to each other.

If I suggest The Economist, people think I’m for liberalism (The Economist has a major liberalism slant), but really, they tend to make factual statements and then turn to liberalism as a solution, which a regular reader can be like “okay the facts and your background introduction to the topic are good. I don’t necessarily agree with your solution but I get your viewpoint.”

When people ask for suggestions, they often want a simple news source that is unbiased. And I have nothing to give them because I don’t read unbiased news sources.