In the comments of my post yesterday, someone asked for a thread on reliable news sources. Well, here you go.
A couple that I follow that might be of interest to political junkies:
- The Down Ballot – this used to be the part of Daily Kos called Daily Kos elections, and it remains an excellent place to keep up-to-date about down ballot elections and state-level polling.
- Split Ticket – poll analysis by independent data nerds.
I also think that The Guardian is about the best “general purpose” news site around. It has its limitations, but it’s generally better than the Post or NYT on US politics. And, of course, Talking Points Memo, which I’ll remind anyone who can’t afford a subscription that they have a pretty liberal free subscription policy.
Anyway, post your suggestions below.
dm
I haven’t been in the comment threads, but I expect people have mentioned donating to Pro Publica. It’s felt like a real good investment the past few years.
Trivia Man
The Guardian is my go to for live blogs of debates.
Lurker #42
I never post but I’ll give you a few of mine mine –
electoral-vote.com – great all year but especially great heading into elections
http://www.bbc.co.uk – Across the pond views of everything and they cover international news better than our press
http://www.aljazeera.com – I like views from all kinds of places
http://www.memeorandum.com – Learned of this here. I like it!
http://www.theguardian.com – already mentioned
drudgereport.com – He’s more neutral now
greengoblin
I also subscribe to The Guardian. I’ve seen criticism of its reporting, but I don’t really see the problems. Probably because I just understand the U.S. stuff.
Steve LaBonne
@greengoblin: Two problems- too much very online leftism with little apparent comprehension of what a tiny slice of the US electorate that represents, and an increasing tendency to run American-style campaign theater criticism stories. Still definitely more informative than FTFNYT and WaPo.
Steve LaBonne
I subscribe to TPM and kick in a few bucks to their fund drives and I encourage others to do the same. They do good work with a very small staff and Marshall is a smart political commentator. I want to help keep them around.
MattF
TPM, C-SPAN, Apple News. Apple News is a hodgepodge, but it offers a lot of magazines and newspapers. And, of course, BJ.
VFX Lurker
I subscribe to The Los Angeles Times. I live in Los Angeles County, and this paper helps me better understand California and local issues (ex: housing, coastal erosion, water problems).
Bonus: I found some amazing local restaurants through this paper (Heyri Cafe; the “Shanghai Pan Fried Small Bao” at Kang Kang Food Court).
EDIT – Like Steve LaBonne, I also subscribe to Talking Points Memo.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Lurker #42:
Seconded electoral-vote and Aljazeera. One can also link to Taegan Goddard’s material from the former, another good read.
Washington Monthly is good. I don’t agree with them on everything (they have a piece up on why Harris should appoint a (R) to her Cabinet for example), but over the years I’ve learned a ton about issues from them.
KatKapCC
It’s not quite the same thing, but there are a few Substacks that I have found very helpful, mostly regarding legal stuff re: Trump et al. Too lazy to link but the ones I follow include:
And I would also recommend the podcast “Prosecuting Donald Trump” with Andrew Weissmann (former Assistant US Attorney, lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation, and former DOJ) and Mary McCord (former Assistant US Attorney in DC, also formerly with DOJ and other national security legal roles). They just had their 100th weekly episode so it’s been going a while, but every Tuesday they go over the developments in Trump’s various cases, and both of them are smart and well-spoken and explain things quite well.
As far as news, I agree with The Guardian and ProPublica, and would also add Mother Jones for more investigative stuff.
CaseyL
I also subscribe to the LA Times, despite not living in LA.
Also the Philadelphia Inquirer, and I don’t live in Philly either (though I did as a child).
Both were recommended to me as newspapers not (yet) wrecked by private equity “investors” or being bought up by a chain.
But speaking of chain papers, I’ve lately heard good things about USA Today, which absolutely and totally blows my mind because USA Today has been called “MacPaper” for most of its existence: anodyne, shallow reportage which is to journalism what MacDonald’s is to hamburgers.
I don’t know if USA Today has actually improved, or of the rest of the MSM has become so degraded and worthless that USA Today now looks good in comparison.
Another Scott
A few I check regularly:
VOANews.com – Voice of America
RFERL.org – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
France24.com – It can be hard to know what’s new, but generally pretty good.
DW.com – DeutscheWelle. Like France24, it can be hard to know what’s new sometimes.
AlJazeera.com – as mentioned above, different perspectives, especially on the Middle East.
GovExec.com – US Government news
APNews.com – Associated Press – their website is horrible, but it’s the big news distribution outfit.
Reuters.com – Another big news outfit. Need to register to see more than the front page of headlines.
KyivIndependent.com – Ukraine news
WhiteHouse.gov/briefing-room – Announcements direct from the White House
Mastodon.social/explore – Very new online stuff, with a Mastodon perspective (not trying to monetize your clicks)
phys.org/latest-news/ – a good science news aggregator
I scan lots and lots of stuff!
Cheers,
Scott.
Marleedog
Taniel and G Eliot Morris are both good polling analysts. JoshTPM has a list called “Numbers Peeps” that is good
I dowloaded the CSpan app, and you do not have to do the thing about logging in through your cable provider.
TBone
Tiedrich’s weekly news recaps are always great (he ain’t lied to me yet):
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/this-week-in-stupid-august-31-edition
Making the news better, one cuss word at a time
(ok, many cuss words, always)
TBone
On a more serious note, Heather Cox Richardson’s daily emails always cover the most important news. Highly recommend.
Plus, her history lessons are *chef’s kiss
MattF
Also, ArsTechnica and Quanta magazine. Not politics, but good-to-excellent on technical stuff.
Marleedog
Aaron Rupar on Twitter watches PAB on the teevee so you dont have to. Definitely partisan, though.
trollhattan
In the spirit of this helpful thread, Deutsche Welle.
As a historical note, today is the 85th anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Poland and they have a prominent article. You don’t find that sort of mea culpa very often. (Russia? Japan? The US? As if.)
https://www.dw.com/en/hitlers-germany-invaded-poland-85-years-ago/a-70094912
nickdag
I’m a big fan of the following two writers:
Volts by David Roberts for all things energy-related (and the occasional great political rant)
https://www.volts.wtf/
The Editorial Board, led by John Stoehr for frequently insight opinion
https://www.editorialboard.com/
Anonymous at Work
Separately, gonna be doing Florida and Arkansas ballot initiative remarks soon. DOWN BALLOT also covers the topic, often either ratf$cking by Republicans or popular bills that Republicans won’t consider.
Sadly, voters often support Democratic policies but vote for Republicans in office.
Michael Bersin
I’ve been on/running Show Me Progress – a Missouri (and sometimes regional) government/politics blog since 2007. It was started as part of the Fifty State Blog Project.
I’m curious if there are any former Fifty State blogs still out there, or if there are state/regional blogs which regularly cover this stuff anymore.
BSR
I just check posts on a site run by some guy named Cole. Usually all the news I can stomach…
Ken
Although they don’t usually do politics, a new Map Men just dropped on gerrymandering. If you know anyone in Ohio who might be confused by the state’s summary of their anti-gerrymandering ballot issue, it might help. Some other states have them on the ballot too, I think.
Ken
@Marleedog: Rupar also has a Bluesky account, for those who want are avoiding
the nazi barX/Twitter. I don’t know how the content compares.BR
@Ken:
It seems Rupar posts first on Threads these days, from what I can tell.
BR
Does anyone know a good source for downballot races that are actually effectively bringing out new voters? What I mean by that is there are some downballot races that are worth supporting because they’re swing districts, but among those there are some whose campaign and/or candidate is able to appeal to new Dem voters who would otherwise not show up to the polls. Is anyone curating such a list?
BR
@CaseyL:
With USA Today I get the sense that they haven’t changed but the rest of the media has become GOP talking point clickbait at best so they look better by comparison.
KrackenJack
Interesting thread. For investigative journalism, I pitch in some money to ProPublica, the Texas Observer and 404 Media. TBH, I usually see the results of their work highlighted on Mastodon rather than visiting their sites.
West of the Rockies
I suppose Kos is so obvious as to not require mention…
H.E.Wolf
My favorite source – for news, 1 day late – is Electoral-Vote.com. It’s a once-a-day, multi-item blog with 2 writers. They provide news/analysis Mon-Fri, they do Q&A on Saturdays, and they post readers’ letters on Sundays.
They avoid “outrage du jour (de l’heure)” coverage… perhaps because the writers are a historian/professor, and a computer scientist/astrophysicist. Both professions tend to take the long view. :-)
Their news-the-next-day model also tamps down most of the natural human impulse to react in the moment, which I appreciate.
Anonymous at Work
Ballotpedia.org is a good neutral source to begin looking at the entire ballot for anywhere. Basic ‘both sides’ statements on issues but neutral and short.
Anoniminous
Problem I have with TPM is Marshall’s habit of running FTNYT patented “15 Ignorant Hicks Sit Down in a coffee shop in Boondocks Ohio just as they have for the last 75 years” & blah blah blah
The most recent example is the top article pearl-clutching O Woe Is Me that ignorant hick white people in western Pennsylvania who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 plan to vote for him in 2024.
Well no fucking shit, Sherlock
ETA: PA is going to be brought to the position of being won by the Democratic coalition and won by the urban black vote on the right side of the state
Rusty
TPM also gives students free Prime memberships. I work full time but I started seminary at night for my masters. I asked then if you had to be a full time student and the answer was no, you just need your .edu address.
Ishiyama
Don’t forget C-SPAN. And sometimes I search for a topic on the youtubes, and see a clip from, e.g., Bloomberg, or local news from Raleigh, N.C., and such like nuggets of information.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5130554/span-founder-brian-lamb-retires-47-years
Geminid
Al Jazeera is a good source for Middle East new but I keep in mind that they are owned by the government of Qatar and will not contradict official policy. That’s not such a bad thing because Qatar is an important regional actor and the government often telegraphs policy through their news site.
The same is true for Saudi Arabia and al Arabiya. The UAE has its own news site as well. All three of these Gulf-based media sites report on international affairs including US politics.
I read Turkish news sites like Daily Sabah less often, but they have good reporting on Israeli/Palestinian stories. Turkish media are more attentive to these matters than American media sites which tend to ignore this area unless it’s blowing up.
Levent Kemal is a veteran Istanbul-based freelance reporter who has his own site, “ActaFabulae.” It provides in-depth reporting on conflicts from Kashmir to Mali and everywhere in between. Kemal also writes for London-based Middle East Eye, as does the excellant Ragip Soylu. I check out both men’s Twitter accounts every day now.
trollhattan
BBC has been infested by enough Tories (certain Tony Jay would have receipts on this) they can’t help but conduct their own Cletus Safari.
‘I want to see her challenged’ – swing voters unconvinced by Harris interviewv681z4o
Nobody, as in not one person, should give a fuck about what an “undecided” voter thinks in 2024. They are as unserious as they are too few to count.
Lurker #42
@MattF:
First thread comment I’ve replied to in 15 years. Agree with ars. Also on that note techdirt.com. Definitely another technical fact-based media source I go to offen.
Yet Another Haldane
Thanks for the thread, I’ve bookmarked it to harvest links later. Here’s my $0.02:
– I haven’t yet signed up, but I like the idea of Ground News, at https://ground.news/. They’re an aggregator with a lot of sources, and they evaluate both stories (who’s covering this and who is not?) and outlets (what is their political bias and how good are they at reporting actual facts?). They have a bunch of free content, plus subscribers get more detailed analyses of sources and reading habits.
– Also, university newspapers can be really good, despite being chronically underfunded and often harassed by petty totalitarian administrations. For local stuff I check the Minnesota Daily at https://mndaily.com (and scroll past the hockey and football stuff (nothing against Big Sports, just not why I’m there)).
– Local/regional nonprofits exist too! Over the years, MinnPost (https://www.minnpost.com) has snarfed up lots of good journalists laid off by the Strib.
– Another regional nonprofit is The Minnesota Reformer, https://minnesotareformer.com/news/, which grabbed Christopher Ingraham after he left the WaPo.
Mrscoachb
@KatKapCC: 2 good podcasts from the Mueller She Wrote team are Jack—-covering Jack Smith’s prosecution of Trump, and Clean up on Aisle 45- which covers the other Trump legal issues. Yes, two podcats are needed to adequaley Cover this. Jack is is with Allison Gill and Andrew McCabe; Clean up is Allison with Peter Strock.
Steve LaBonne
@Anoniminous: That was an email from a reader- he likes to run those sometimes. There’s a good chance we’ll see one from a more upbeat PA reader- he often runs offsetting reader perspectives. It’s not one of my favorite features of TPM but it’s harmless.
frosty
You hit my two main ones – TPM and the Grauniad* I got the free trial to the Baltimore Banner but let it lapse. I get the daily LA Times update which gives you one story and a lot of headlines. I haven’t decided to subscribe yet though.
Thinking about the Philly Inky because it’s nonprofit and for PA news.
* Even tho Tony Jay hates the Guardian. He hasn’t suggested a good alternative yet.
Yet Another Haldane
– Ground News: https://ground.news. Curated aggregation, evaluates outlets for bias and factuality.
– Local nonprofits. Mine include Minnesota Reformer (https://minnesotareformer.com/news/) and MinnPost (https://www.minnpost.com/). They’ve both snapped up good experienced journalists who got laid off by big media.
– University papers, e.g., Minnesota Daily (https://mndaily.com/) are often excellent.
Fair Economist
I subscribe to the Guardian and Talking Points Memo, as well as the LA Times (not as affected by MSM brainrot as many papers.) I also follow the Voice of OC, a small local online paper (seems to be written by journalism students) here in Orange County. Two youtube channels I use when I have some time to waste with the inherently pokey video formats are DW News, a public newschannel from Germany, and TLDR, a small private British video channel.
Yet Another Haldane
I’m confused! I’ve tried twice to post a comment here and both times they disappeared. The second time I saved the comment in the cut buffer and tried again to post it but got an error that I’d already said it. So presumably these comments are somewhere? What have I done?
Help me, WaterGirl!
Baud
@trollhattan:
Half the undecided voters featured by the media are Republican candidates.
BR
@Baud:
I’ve been struck by this as well. On a panel that MSNBC (!) ran the other day, the non-white man who was negative about Harris turned out to be a Republican local/state candidate for something. Why would he be an undecided voter for a panel?!
MazeDancer
Thanks for the Split Ticket rec.
Had no idea about Nebraska Senate. That a guy named Osborn is running as an independent, and is tied with the GOP incumbent.
Osborn will not commit to caucusing with either party. But he is pro-choice and pro-Union. So, he is not going to want to lunch with Matt Gaetz.
Unfortunately. NE has joined the increasing group of states that want to charge big for their voter lists. They want $500. So, unless I can get the addresses from the campaign, Mr. Osborn will not be among PostCard Patiots offerings this season.
But more power to him. The Senate is grim.
Kristine
I’ve been enjoying Jay Kuo’s The Status Kuo newsletter. I don’t recall what made me sign up, but so far I’ve found his discussions informative.
If nothing else, his Saturday meme/post wrap-up “Just for Xeets and Giggles” is usually good for a few hearty laughs. No issue today, however, because there is a baby on the way.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Speaking of TMP I do find this letter to the editor there interesting.
Mushroom Dick makes the MAGA hats feel happy about being failures “Like dude, Trump was born rich and he still blew it. The game is rigged against us, dontzya’ know?”
NotMax
Usually worth a look – Semafor
Couple of foreign sources.
France 24
Deutsche Welle
Larch
Most of my sources have already been mentioned, but I’ll add that for liveblogs my go-to is Daily Kos. They usually have at least two people doing the live-blogging, so each can catch what the other misses. As a result, they feel much more thorough than other liveblogs I’ve tried. They’re not shy about reacting in print to what they’re seeing & hearing, which isn’t what everyone’s preference, but I find them invaluable for liveblogs.
Roberto el oso
I heartily second the thumbs-ups for Heather Cox Richardson. I’d add ‘Digby’s Hullabaloo’. And, although the endlessly inventive and non-stop snark and silliness might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I’ve found that ‘Wonkette’ is pretty damn accurate in their reporting, and they are very much not afraid to “get out of the boat”.
Frankensteinbeck
@BR:
My guess would be that the news people picking the panel have an idea in their head of who the ‘undecided voter’ is and what they think, and go looking for whoever fits the type.
trollhattan
Suggest parking this on the RH sidebar as a resource, once it’s well populated.
Msb
Like several above, I subscribe to the Guardian and TPM, and read Kos and Balloon Juice (of course). Very disappointed in the Grauniad’s recent US election coverage because it works so hard not to notice the elite political media’s thumb on the scale: “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
Josh Marshall at TPM has, I think, the central insight about trump: that everything he does is a dominance game and that he requires the dominated first to let him humiliate them and then demands they continuously humiliate themselves. I believe Josh also coined the perfect phrase for everyone who plays that stupid game: dignity wraiths.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Michael Bersin:
Lemme toss in another plug for Show Me Progress. Yeah, it’s Misery but it’s also reporting on a red state and often informs us on the left about the currents of red state politics and policy outside of the usual, stereotypical, insanity.
Villago Delenda Est
Wonkette actually does fact checking stuff, you know. Yeah, terribly lefitst, snarky, but they report on news in a factual manner. Without sacrificing their snark.
dnfree
@dm: I started donating to them last year. I’ve got humanitarian charities like Doctors Without Borders, and local cultural groups that try to include the while community, and just recently I’ve started to include investigative groups like ProPublica and Mother Jones.
Mai Naem mobile
Bolts – https://boltsmag.org/
It’s run by Daniel Nichanian(Taniel for those on Twitter.) A lot of criminal.justice stuff especially as related to elections and lots of election stuff – propostions, voting rights, voter suppression. Lots of really good info. I’ve read stuff there that I’ve never even really considered before.
Super Dave
I subscribe to several, including the Guardian. Because I watch Trae Crowder, I discovered Ground News, an aggregator that rates coverage from a lot of sources as Left, Center, or Right (bias), and also on factuality. There’s a feature called “Blindspot” that shows blind spots for the right and the left. Try it for free, I subscribed.
Villago Delenda Est
@BR:
Because working the brain-dead refs of the MSM is part of the GQp’s shtick.
Mai Naem mobile
The AP – https://apnews.com/
I know some people have issues with the AP reporters covering the campaigns and Biden etc but the AP has a lot of good info on smaller political stories happening around various US cities/states which really doesn’t get covered by the natuonal media unless/until it becomes a huge scandal.
dnfree
@Ishiyama: I subscribe to Bloomberg because I’ve seen lots of good analysis there, but I pay annually and every year I have to call up and tell them I’m just a mere senior citizen who likes news, not a wealthy investor, to get a reduced rate.
I also subscribe to TPM and donate to Heather Cox Richardson and electoral-vote. I have also followed James Fallows since even before he wrote “Blind into Baghdad”, and there are other media observers like Dan Froomkin.
The New Yorker also has good political and history articles.
Tony Jay
@frosty:
Mate, that’s like saying “I know you don’t like ‘Yellow’, but you haven’t told me a better Coldplay song to listen to.”
Some things are beyond the ken of mere mortal man, in this case because very rich bastards have spent a long time making sure there are no decent UK News outlets.
But seriously, Teh Fooking Guardian is about the ‘best’ you’re going to get, but it doesn’t mean it’s coverage isn’t deliberately and deceitfully edited to support a very narrow narrative that is always “Oh, those conservatives are terrible, but whoever their main opponents are are just as bad if not worse, and if that message ends up keeping conservatives in power, well, just buy a subscription so we can tell you how awful they are.”
Geminid
@Geminid: I also follow some of the news on the Gaza war through Barak Ravid and Noga Tarnopolsky. Ravid is a veteran Israeli political reporter who now reports for DC-based Axios News. CIA Director Bill Burns and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan seem to have Ravid on speed dial.
Tarnopolsky is more of a citizen journalist who says she aspires to write about food again. She reports on the Israeli opposition’s protest movement and delivers scathing comments on Netanyahu’s rotten government and its crew of hacks and thugs.
One of Tarnopolsky’s posts tonight described the hospitalization of Natalie Zangauker, who was calling for the release of her hostage brother when a cop deliberately trampled her with his horse.
Tarnopolsky also reposts some of the heavier hitters among Israeli journalists. Ravid used to limit his social media account to his own diplomacy beat, but now he also reposts other Israeli journalists on political subjects, occasonally adding commentary of his own.
I found both of these journalists through Laura Rozen, who aggregates reports from other reliable journalists. I found Rozen in turn through Cheryl Rofer
Ed. Ravid and Tarnopolsky both reported on a Channel 12 poll relesed yesterday. The quesumtion was, “Should Prime Minister Netanyahu retire and not run for office again? The answers were:
Yes, should retire— 69%; No, should not retire— 22%.
Phylllis
@H.E.Wolf: Thank you for this. I’ve been trying to remember the name of this site for the last month.
The Unmitigated Gaul
Has anyone mentioned The Racket – Jonathan Katz’s site? He busted Katie Britt. terrific writer. Clear-eyed, especially on the Middle East.
http://theracket.news
joel hanes
High Country News
gwangung
@Kristine: Jay’s one of George Takei’s social media folks. He’s also a Broadway producer (and apparently one of my successors at the alma mater’s Asian American theatre group…).
exbarrowboy
My usual sources (TPM, Gruaniad, BBC) have already been mentioned, but I’ll add a supplemental.
It’s a bit hypocritical to mention a source where I’ve let my subscription lapse, but imho the Financial Times is well worth a look, https://www.ft.com/us. The dead tree version is available in a fair number of US markets and that’s what I’d subscribed to, in fair part for their weekend arts and culture coverage. The received wisdom on the WSJ was that their news coverage was good but their editorial line was batshit crazy. The FT will also have straightforward news for an audience that needs realistic coverage, with perhaps more of an international bias. This is combined with an editorial line that may have its foibles but seems refreshingly sane, though it’s obviously not a lefty rag.
I let my subscription lapse when I couldn’t really justify the unread papers piling up in the recycling but when I finally retire next year I’ll probably start it up again
Monica Morse
With all of the mentions of The Guardian so far, it’s disappointing that no one has pointed out that The Guardian is deeply transphobic. It used to be one of my reads, but I eventually decided that I couldn’t keep reading it as long as it maintained its slant on trans issues.
Princess
If you love radio but can’t stomach NPR All Things Considered any more, I would suggest CBC’s As it Happens. The global news roundup that precedes it by half an hour is also pretty good. Fun fact: David Frum’s mother used to host it.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens
pacem appellant
@VFX Lurker:
I do not live in L.A. or environs—I live in the Bay Area—but I love my L.A. Time subscription (most days). I agree that it’s great for California news and is more than decent about the goings on in Sacramento. It’s not great for national or international news, but otherwise, I prefer it the local papers.
pacem appellant
@Villago Delenda Est:
Wonkette is perfect. No notes.
H.E.Wolf
@Phylllis:
My pleasure!
Mrscoachb
@Villago Delenda Est: Without Wonkette’s A level snark I wouldn’t have survived the Trump years! Up vote for Digby also, good writing and analysis. Emptywheel for when you want to get deep in the weeds on legal issues.
Tehanu
@VFX Lurker:
Yes, me too. The LA Times isn’t what it used to be, but it’s still better than most, and its local coverage is good.
Yet Another Haldane
Testing, testing …
(Seeing if my comments can sneak past the spam filter now.)