Alfino's Information Diet

Return to Critical Thinking

News and Current Information and Opinion

List your current news and information with a brief description of focus and bias.

• BBC - international news, non-US perspectives, us: liberal/socialist, europe:mainstream/centrist
• Corriere Della Sera - Italian news
• New York Times - national and international news, opinion, global: centrist/conservative, us: liberal/left
• Spokesman-Review - local news, centrist/conservative
• The Inlander - local news, liberal
• iGoogle - weather, customized aggregator for article links for news and interests
• The Economist - international news, non-US perspectives, global: conservative free market, socially liberal
• The Atlantic - news, features, hard for me to discern bias, but probably US liberal, International moderate.
• The New Yorker - New York liberal. Very long articles written by very smart people.

Information about Books, Movies, Music

List sources for information about culture and arts.

• New York Review of Books - Opinion, Book reviews, notable work across many academic discipines
• LastFM - collaborative filter, basic information about artists
• Pitchfork - reviews of independent music
• The Inlander - local music/events, local: liberal
• Meta-critic - Review site for many media, from TV to Music.
• Rotten Tomatoes - Internet Movie Review site
• IMDB - Internet Movie Database
• Amazon - collaborative filter site (and online store)

Sources for Balancing and Deepening Perspectives

Use this section to identify sources that would balance or diversify your primary trusted sources.

• Human Events
• Commentary
• American Spectator
• Slate
• Salon
• City Journal
• The Nation - very liberal, downright socialist

Special Interests

Use this section for topics or interests that you follow aside from general news and cultural information.

• Scientific American
• Fine Woodworking
• Reason - liberatarian perspective
• Science News

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Critical Questions

• Do your sources cover a range of news from local to global?
• What does the reading level and rhetoric of articles in each source tell you about the readership and intellectual level of the source?
• How would you assess the relative objectivity and balance of your sources?
• If you were trying to balance your sources, what perspectives would you add?

Editorial Policies and "About"

Commentary

Commentary is America’s premier monthly magazine of opinion and a pivotal voice in American intellectual life. Since its inception in 1945, and increasingly after it emerged as the flagship of neoconservatism in the 1970’s, the magazine has been consistently engaged with several large, interrelated questions, such as the fate of democracy and of democratic ideas in a world threatened by totalitarian ideologies; the state of American and Western security; the future of the Jews, Judaism, and Jewish culture in Israel, the United States, and around the world; and the preservation of high culture in an age of political correctness and the collapse of critical standards.

Reason

Reason is the monthly print magazine of "free minds and free markets." It covers politics, culture, and ideas through a provocative mix of news, analysis, commentary, and reviews. Reason provides a refreshing alternative to right-wing and left-wing opinion magazines by making a principled case for liberty and individual choice in all areas of human activity.

Science News

Science News has been published since 1922. This award-winning biweekly news magazine covers important and emerging research in all fields of science. It publishes concise, accurate, timely articles that appeal to both general readers and scientists, reaching nearly 130,000 subscribers and more than one million readers. Audible.com distributes an audio edition of Science News. News from the Science News reporting team also appears at www.sciencenews.org. Updated daily, this site covers all areas of science. Science News is published by Society for Science & the Public, a nonprofit 501(c) (3) organization dedicated to the public engagement in scientific research and education.

Salon

Salon, the award-winning online news and entertainment Web site, combines original investigative stories, breaking news, provocative personal essays and highly respected criticism along with popular staff-written blogs about politics, technology and culture. Salon hosts two online communities, Table Talk and The Well, and is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York City and Washington D.C.

The Nation

The Nation will not be the organ of any party, sect, or body. It will, on the contrary, make an earnest effort to bring to the discussion of political and social questions a really critical spirit, and to wage war upon the vices of violence, exaggeration, and misrepresentation by which so much of the political writing of the day is marred. (from The Nation's founding prospectus, 1865).