Several friends have aske me where I get news these days. They just wanted a couple of suggestions. Of course I couldn’t just do that. I wrote something longer. But then I went back and made a short cersion.
So there’s the short version, then the long version.
This is all off the cuff.
SHORT VERSION
Just when we so urgently need timely, reliable reporting on what’s happening in the USA and in Michigan, many of the longstanding news sources are getting wobbly. Where can we turn? Most of you probably already know Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American nightly Substack newsletter. I have read her every day for several years now, and so should you; but she is a historian, not a news journalist. Here are three recommendations that may be new to you.
1. Democracy Now! is a web-based news service that does a live newscast every morning from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM Eastern Time (with host Amy Goodman). This could be your daily news show, or you could alternate it with PBS NewsHour or whatever else you currently rely on.
2. Zeteo, whose star is Mehdi Hasan, is another group effort, and like Democracy Now! is serious, competent, and not yielding to any of the special interests that skewed the Gaza coverage of sources like NYT and various never-Trump orgs and blogs. The Zeteo website is a Substack blog.
3. For Michigan news, in addition to the standards (Grand Rapids Press / Mlive and The Detroit Free Press), check out Bridge MI, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news agency that provides objective, factual reporting on education, politics, etc. It is not an anti-Trump channel, but if Trump knew about it he would be anti-Bridge, simply because it is truthful and nonpartisan.
When you find indie news sources that work for you, support them financially at whatever level you can. The plutocrats who have kissed Trump’s ring are not going to help.
LONG VERSION
Where do you get your news these days? What sources can you trust?
The seventy-two-point front-page headline would be: CORPORATE MEDIA CAPITULATE TO TRUMP. This is the worrying trend in the last couple of months, regarding both major newspapers and major television networks, all of which are also major Internet channels. The Washington Post, the LA Times, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and many other corporate-owned or oligarch-owned news organizations still have excellent journalists of sterling character working for them; but what will be the effects of pressure from their Vichy overlords? No one knows. So you have to be looking elsewhere to find news-and-analysis soures that are not now, and will not be, under Trump’s thumb. Elsewhere means independent and foreign news organizations.
I have neither the expertise nor the time to write comprehensive survey of good news sources. But people ask me sometimes where to get news these days. So I will give some personal recommendations. These are sources I turn to.
1. For world and national news. These are straight-down-the-fairway, trustworthy sources of long standing: NPR, PBS, BBC, AP, and The Guardian. I access NPR and BBC mostly by listening to public radio stations, PBS by listening to the full-show (audio) podcast rendering of the daily NewsHour television show, and AP and The Guardian mostly via their iPad apps. NPR and PBS are under attack now by Trump. Trump would like to stamp out any truthful news channel, but NPR and PBS are vulnerable because they get some public funding. Neither is partisan. But it is simply impossible to speak truth without making Trump look bad, because he really is very bad. So he’ll be trying to defund both NPR and PBS. The Guardian is a British organization—I remember when it was The Manchester Guardian—but it has internationalized and has good coverage of the US. I spend a fair amount of time with one more source—the New York Times—but it is in a different category for me. I wouldn’t recommend trusting NYT as much as the others. NYT has failed the Gaza test and other important tests. But it is an independent newspaper and I think still indispensable. I have canceled my Washington Post subscription (with sorrow and regret) but I have not (yet) canceled NYT.
2. For Michigan news. One of my subsriptions is the Detroit Free Press—a Gannett newspaper (like USA Today), hence corporate. But Gannett is a publicly traded company, not the fiefdom of an individual oligarch. I also subscribe to the Grand Rapids Press and Mlive. Mlive has corporate connections related to the Newhouse family, but I don’t know much about them. I know that the GR Press does some good reporting on education in Kent County. I think both of these newspapers are important sources for people here. I especially want to mention Bridge MI, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news agency that provides objective, factual reporting on education, politics, etc. It is not an anti-Trump channel, but if Trump knew about it he would be anti-Bridge, simply because it is truthful and nonpartisan.
3. I’m putting this third, but for me it is not third in importance! These are sources that have recently become indispensable. I recommend signing up for their emails and checking their webpages regularly:
- Letters from an American is the nightly Substack newsletter of Heather Cox Richardson, who somehow manages to track the most important developments each day, usually focusing on the threats to constitutional democracy in the USA emanating from Trump and his people, and setting them in the context of the whole of US history.
- Democracy Now! is a web-based news service that does a live newscast every morning from 8:00 AM to 9:00 AM Eastern Time (with host Amy Goodman). I know people who rank Amy Goodman and Heather Cox Richardson right up at the top together. HCR is not a journalist. She is a historian who reads journalists and summarizes them and puts them into perspective for you. But Democracy Now! is a news organization.
- Zeteo, whose star is Mehdi Hasan, is another group effort, and like Democracy Now! is serious, competent, and not yielding to any of the special interests that skewed the Gaza coverage of sources like NYT and various never-Trump orgs and blogs. The Zeteo website is a Substack blog.
- Popular Information, the Substack of Judd Legum, does excellent investigative reporting.
- Public Notice, the Substack of Aaron Rupar, is like Popular Information. Sometimes Legum and Rupar take on join projects which are published on both sites.
- Robert Reich’s Substack is a good place for economic and political analysis. Reich is, in addition to being a top-notch economist, an excellent teacher-communicator.
- The Bulwark—started up by Republican never-Trumpers—has numerous stellar reporters and analysts. If, like most of us, you wonder where all the honest Republians went—well, you’ll find many of them on The Bulwark.
- Thinking About is the Substack of Yale University historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on Europe east of Germany and west of Russia (think Ukraine, Poland, etc.). He does not post every day, but when he does post, you should never miss it.
- The Contrarian is yet another Substack, the most recently created of those listed here. It was started by Jen Rubin and Norman Eisen after Rubin exited from the Washington Post because of Jeffrey Bezos’s submission to Trump. This isn’t my favorite site, because Jen Rubin is so wrong on Gaza that I don’t trust her moral compass. But she is reliably anti-Trump. You should at least know about this site.
I’m sure I have missed a lot! Feel free to leave suggestions. (I moderate comments, so whatever you write won’t appear immediately, and if I find what you erite unhelpful it will never appear.)
Verba Sparsa 