How I Read the News

What's my specific combo of staying informed, involved, AND sane?

Over the past few months I’ve given you all a lot of firm reminders that it’s critical to find a good balance of trustworthy, non-fearmongering-y news sources, as well as to find folks reporting on good news as well.

A lot of folks have told me that while they appreciate the advice, they aren’t sure what that actually looks like in practice. While it can and should look different for every person based on their specific job, passions, and needs, I thought it might be helpful to share my personal routines and practices about engaging with the news.

There are two big things that shape my personal strategies for news and social media:

1. Intentionality: I don’t have any media practices “by default.” I have opted into or built all the systems I want to use. This means you should pretty much never be using the news as background noise—this is going to make you miserable.

2. Balance: I limit my intake of fear-heavy media sources, and make sure I have sources of positive news.

My mantra about the news is that I need to give myself permission to know less to do more. You will find I’m not an expert about every single thing happening in the national news at any given moment. I can’t name every politician in DC (or even in Missouri). But, I have the emotional bandwidth to actually contribute to the movement and to my community because I’m not completely drained from “staying informed” on every tragedy facing humanity at any given moment.

This is not, however, permission for my more comfortable or privileged folks to check out, turn off the news, and in the name of boundaries pretend everything is okay. Limiting our news intake is a strategy to allow us to make an actual difference for the things we care about. It’s a first step.

I’ll be releasing this full article to all my subscribers in about a month, but as always, if you want a free upgrade to paid, you can share this newsletter with friends, buy & review a copy of my book (and tell me about it), or literally just ask me and I will upgrade you for free, no questions asked.