[crazygringo]

I agree... but I think there are two important caveats.

1) Some news is important, purely for social (not informational) reasons. When you show up to the office, you want to know why everyone's talking about Miley Cyrus! And you need to know who won the Superbowl, even if you have no interest.

2) News does have explanatory power, but mostly in weekly mags like The Economist, New Yorker, etc., and occasionally in analysis pieces by the NYT. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But to my first point -- I would love a service that would "curate" the need-to-know headlines, to send to me every morning/afternoon. Where each headline had a numerical score or increasing importance (say, 1-5), and I could choose to subscribe to all headlines of 5, and all headlines 3-5 in tech, for example. The important thing being that this is not a simple daily digest, but that I'd only receive it when there was something newsworthy -- plenty of days, you'd receive nothing at all.

[aaronem]

In reference to your point 1: Ask! It'll get you a funny look or two, maybe, but my experience has been that people love explaining things that "everybody knows" almost as much as they do expounding their opinions. (I couldn't care less about the Superbowl, but I recognize lots of people do -- so, when one of them asks me what I think of it, I shrug and say I don't know a thing about baseball. This always gets a laugh, which usually leads into a conversation that's enjoyable for all involved even if the informational content thereof isn't worth committing to memory.)

[npsimons]

1) Some news is important, purely for social (not informational) reasons. When you show up to the office, you want to know why everyone's talking about Miley Cyrus! And you need to know who won the Superbowl, even if you have no interest.

No, just no. Maybe I'll sound like a curmudgeon, but that information is totally worthless, and for people like me, is exactly the kind of thing that makes me depressed. "Oh, hey, some random sports team recreated a pointless tribal warfare act! NSA? Who cares what they do, I've got nothing to hide." There are more important, more culturally relevant things to discuss, and one should not stoop to ignore them merely to "fit in." One should try to elevate discourse by ignoring the shallow, vapid happenings that happen to be in vogue (precisely what this article describes as being wrong with "news"!) and help to enlighten those around oneself.

[eludwig]

Not picking on you in particular, but you are what you eat. Who is to say that people shouldn't eat what they want to eat, unless it is some part of you? Isn't it their responsibility to consume what they like?

Eating sweets makes people fat. You can eat what you want and live with the consequences, just the same as everyone else.

[dinkumthinkum]

Recreated a pointless warfare act ... Man HN has a strong connection to the real world!

[haukilup]

You are able to make the same point you are trying to make without over-generalizing.

[stickydink]

Similarly, I've always dreamed of a service like this. At least one that informs you of world-impact-level events; wars breaking out, major disasters, etc. It'd be nice to find out about these quickly, without stumbling on it later.

[kgmpers]

I haven't tried this but you might get something out of creating a reddit multi (maybe r/worldnews, r/news, r/science, r/foodforthought, and whatever else), check it once a week and sort by top and "this month" or "this week". The top ten links are probably impactful, engaging, and relevant.

The lazy in me would actually like this in a weekly email.