We’re all reading the same five things

What are the sources you actually rely on to stay informed right now?Over the summer I listened to “What’s The Plan” from the US organising group Indivisible, which is a fantastic podcast for activists. They asked their listeners that question, and plenty of people wrote in.The result was a list of 38 named sources — legacy outlets, emerging ones, and individual creators. Ezra Levin, one of the hosts, noticed something. He said the categories weren’t really how people think about this stuff. What they’re doing instead is filling functions: facts and news (NYT, Guardian), analysis (Robert Reich, Rachel Maddow), history (Heather Cox Richardson), legal (Democracy Docket), action items (Indivisible themselves), and emotional regulation (Hopium).Ezra’s right about the functions. But the thing is, all those functions are downstream of the news. Each one is somebody telling you what to make of something that already happened. It’s a narrow list.An organiser’s media diet can be much richer…