These days, a growing number of us rely primarily on social media services to stay informed on current events, whether it be at the local, national, or international level. The temptation to remain comfortably within the confines of a potent algorithm is strong, and short-form multimedia is a convenient method of news delivery if there ever was one.
However, getting your news fromTikTok, Reddit, X (née Twitter), et al. comes with some potentially serious drawbacks as well. Closed-source algorithms are nebulous and difficult to predict, it’s all too easy to enter an echo chamber without even realizing it, and bad actors aim to spread misinformation and disinformation across the web (and, increasingly, by means of artifical intelligence).
That’s where social media-free news services come into play: there are a growing number of handyappsout there that can keep you locked in on all the latest happenings, while providing relief from algorithmic purgatory in the process. Here are 5 news and news-adjacent apps that make me never want to log ontoFacebookever again.
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1Ground News
Check blind spots in the coverage of events
Ground News
Ground News is an app that allows you to compare the coverage of news events across various outlets, helping you identify bias and blind spots.
Ground News, which is available both as a standalone app and as a web browser extension, is an excellent tool for fighting against bias, sensationalism, and misinformation. The service offers a useful birds-eye view of various topics and current events, showcasing news coverage across both sides of the political spectrum. From here, you can see the percentage of publications that have covered a story, analyze the framing of current events, and identify blind spots in reporting. Ground News is a free app, though you’ll need to spring for the Pro or Premium subscription tiers to access many of the service’s most useful tools.
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2PressReader
Browse for newspapers and magazines the digital way
PressReader: News & Magazines
PressReader presents the news with a pleasing newspaper and magazine-style app interface, boasting access to over 7,000 publications.
PressReader is home to over 7,000 publications from over 120 countries, offering access to both newspapers and magazines. The app makes it easy to discover content from sources both familiar and new, while presenting the news in all its traditional print view glory. If you enjoy the perks of reading the news electronically, but you aren’t a fan of mobile-style user interfaces, then PressReader offers a happy medium with its highlighting of print covers and magazine artwork. The app is free to get started, but requires a paid Premium subscription in order to access the full catalog of publications and outlets.
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3Flipboard
Curate your own magazine of topics and themes
Flipboard: The Social Magazine
Flipboard is a magazine-style news and content curation service that makes it easy to follow updates, discover stories, and keep tabs on topics.
Flipboard is a highly customizable news aggregation service that lets you follow not only publications, but also topics on a broader level. you may collect articles and save them to your own custom Flipboard Magazine, allowing you to reference stories and news posts at a later date. The app offers a ton of discovery tools for finding new sources of information, while incorporating social media-esque ‘follow’ and hashtagging systems into the fold. Flipboard is entirely free to download and install, and it provides access to a curated selection of content from its in-house editorial team.
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