Wonder Tools for Curated Reading
Useful sources for catching up quickly with worthwhile stories
Hello! I’m Jeremy - thanks for inviting me into your inbox. To avoid pandemic doomscrolling and to open up time to read books, I increasingly rely on trusted curators. In this post I’m sharing a few of my favorite spots for curation.
All replies to this newsletter go directly to my inbox, so say hi here or message me on Twitter @jeremycaplan. I’m always open to feedback and curious about new projects, so hit reply if you have something to share or an idea for a collaboration.
Special event this morning: If you’re curious about Reddit, join me at 11am ET today, Thu Feb 25, for a special session with Reddit’s team on “How Journalists Can Best Use Reddit in 2021.” Update: here’s the recording
The best curators surface stellar stories I otherwise would have missed. They broaden my reading (or listening) radar. Here are a few I rely on.
Arts and Letters Daily
This aggregator from the Chronicle of Higher Education has a wonderfully eclectic mix of curated pieces on arts, culture, music, and philosophy. Each link comes with a short, well-written teaser sentence so you can pick what intrigues you. A few recent links:
A Breakup Letter to My Writing Career by Francesco Pacifico (from N+1);
What are Magazines Good For? A New Yorker piece pondering the cultural sway of magazines “when there are 20-year-old TikTok influencers with many more subscribers than Time”
Pinhookers and Pets A London Review of Books piece on the golden age of cigarettes.
If you prefer to read from your inbox, the weekly newsletter highlights five of the best links on the site.
You can subscribe below 👇 if someone forwarded this to you. 😃
Techmeme
This is the best single site for catching up on the biggest stories in tech. The unique aspect of this aggregator is that it concisely links to many takes on each story, so you can read further on any topic of interest from many angles. There’s no app version of the site, but I use the iPhone function that lets you create a faux app out of any site. (Here’s how to do that).
Mediagazer and Memeorandum
These two sites from the same team as Techmeme offer smartly aggregated media and political news, respectively. They both sum up the top 10 or so stories of the day with a quick scan, with multiple link options for further reading. For those into celebrity news, they have a sister site, We Smirch.
BBC Podcast Radio Hour 📻
This meta-podcast is superb for discovering new podcasts. Each episode features samplings of a whole bunch of interesting shows. Get a taste of their latest batch of recommendations here, including 12 podcasts to make you laugh, like Beef and Dairy Network (a nutty fictional industry show), Heavy Pencil (a fictional actor’s disasters), Dear Joan and Jericha (indecent advice), and Swipe Left Swipe Left (true stories of dating gone wrong).
If you love food, listen to this excellent episode highlighting a dozen delicious food podcasts. I’ll be adding a few of the tastiest to my own collection of recommended podcasts.
You can share, below👇 if you know someone who might like this. 🎁
CBC Podcast Playlist 🎧
has a terrific podcast chain-recommendation series. Here’s how it works: the hosts invite one of their favorite podcasters to chat. They ask that podcaster to recommend their own favorite podcast. Then that podcaster recommends the next one, and so on down the chain, 13 episodes long so far.
Nuzzel
This social curation app personalizes a feed based on what your friends and contacts are sharing on Twitter and/or Facebook. If multiple people you follow on Twitter share something, the rationale goes, it’s more likely to be of interest to you than something picked by a more generic algorithm.
And while Nuzzel surfaces interesting pieces shared by friends and friends of friends, it also includes the opposite - a tab specifically for news from outside of that insular world. News you might have missed. That’s how it can help counter filter bubbles. (Kind of like giving Drudgereport.com readers a dose of Drudgeretort.com. Similar look, different perspective.)
You can also use Nuzzel to automate curation of stories on topics of interest to you, like prison reform, or to gather curated news on specific places or individual companies or politicians. You can even use it to create your own free curated newsletter.
Nuzzel has free iOS and Android apps. Or you can access it on the Web, or receive curated items by email. It was acquired by Scroll in 2019, but hasn’t seen much development since. Nuzzel’s founder, Jonathan Abrams, previously founded Friendster. Hopefully Nuzzel won’t die a similar death.
The Economist Espresso
For quality news in a nutshell, go with this briefing. It’s free for one article a day, if you just want a nibble of news. Or try the full app free for a month. What I like about it is that it’s intentionally slim, not exhaustive. You can read the whole briefing in 10 minutes. After the free trial it’s $5/month on Android or iOS.
Popurls
This portal of portals showcases top links from news sites as well as hubs like Reddit and BoingBoing. It offers a quick view of the Web at large, rather than summary of quality news. Useful, nonetheless, for a quick pulse of the Net.
Timeless reads
For fine prose check out Longform’s best, the superb Longreads editors’ picks, or Narratively’s greatest hits.
You’re Invited. 💌 Today, Thu Feb 25 11am ET
I’m hosting a free presentation by two journalists on the Reddit team on
”How Journalists Can Best Use Reddit in 2021”
Whether you’re new to Reddit or experienced, come learn how journalists can effectively engage with the platform and what’s new. Reddit is a massive set of 100,000 interest-based communities. It’s one of the biggest sites in the world. Update: here’s the recording
Don't forget The Browser: https://thebrowser.com/about/