Pizza Diavola

Following up on my last post, I’m curious as to how you deal with the U.S. MSM. What papers (online or hard copy) do you read? Do you read U.S. papers or foreign papers? Do you rely on blogs for your news, and if so, which ones? Do you primarily read blogs that report the news (e.g. political blogs that analyze information from a variety of articles and do their own research to report on an issue in depth) or blogs that critique the news (e.g. blogs that analyze the way the news is spun and framed)? Do you listen to news on the radio or watch it on TV?

I read the Guardian, which I fell in love with in the summer of 2006. I was living in Rome and my flatmates and I would get a copy of the Guardian from the news kiosk outside the Vatican wall, and I liked the advocacy journalism (the reporters have opinions and aren’t afraid to tell you so), the trenchant humor, and the decidedly liberal positions and issues. I also read The Economist, which I like because it’s well researched, well written, well argued, and often provides citations for studies so that it’s possible for readers to hunt down the studies and make up their own minds what they think about them (it drives me nuts to see references to studies and sources in articles that are so vague that they’re useless for this purpose). Even when I disagree with the positions its writers take, I always come away from it having thought about the issues, and usually with a better understanding of both sides. It also covers foreign politics extensively, which I like. The Financial Times is a recent add, and so far I like it, although I dislike that you need to pay for old articles. I also read a number of feminist blogs that critique the news, primarily Shakesville and The Curvature, with a dash of Feministe now and again.

I used to read the NYT: Op-Eds, section A, Food & Wine, and Thursday’s Fashion/Style/Home & Garden. A few months ago, I cut the Op-Ed section because:

• Maureen Dowd: does not make sense even at the best of times. Writing style revolves primarily around coming up with nicknames and oh-so-ironic and oh-so-hip and frankly-not-that-clever satire. With the primary season, her writing about Clinton and Obama descended into outright offensive and revolting drivel.
• David Brooks: idiot with a great big wad of class and white privilege, completely detached from reality.
• William Kristol: … Take David Brooks, add a heaping of hatred, add a heaping of neocon Republican stupidity, and blend.
• Gail Collins: has descended along the path of Maureen Dowd.
• Thomas Friedman: writes well about the environment, but I disagree with almost everything else he says, and not in the productive, informative kind of disagreement, as with the Economist’s position on Iraq.
• Nicholas Kristof: he’s done great work raising awareness about Darfur and other conflict regions, but I can get more informative, more thoughtful, and less patronizing coverage on prostitution, trafficking, and the uniquely destructive effects that war has on women and girls over at Feministe.

I also cut the Thursday F/S/H & G section a while back because they kept running sexist articles about career women needing wives, women being less happy because of feminism/freedom to work, and stupid career women who spend gobs of money on salon treatments. I’ll occasionally read Bob Herbert, Krugman, and the editorial board, but the odd thing about opinion pieces is that since they tend to focus on arguing positions, progressive blogs have filled that niche for me.