Are you paying for your news?  No?  You just read the web.  After all, its all there, just click and go.

The beautiful thing about the Internet is the quantity of information available.  You can even have your own news site.  However, the flip side to that is quality information.  There’s a lot of it out there, but how can you tell what level of quality it is?  Looking for good code, and you happen to be a programmer?  Then things get a bit easier.  However, I’m not a journalist and I’m not on quite all the beats.

Enter this “news” concept.  I used to turn on the TV when I got home in the evenings to catch up with current events.  The problem here is once again quality of information.  Broadcast news, and quite a bit of what’s on line is more focused on sensationalism.  As CNN’s quest for ratings eroded the quality of the evening news coverage they lost me as a viewer.  I switched channels and found more of the same: low quality news and information.  Either sensationalism or just plan lack of good coverage.  I do watch the Daily Show, but its not going to be my soul source of news.

For years I’ve subscribed to LWN for many of the same reasons.  Its a high quality source of news and information about Linux, Open Source issues, and IT current events.  I use LWN daily at work.  Its a lot more convenient to send out a link to a software update from LWN rather than the vendors own site for many cases.  LWN is a tool that helps keep me a step or two ahead in my career.

Yes, all the news is, indeed, on the Internet.  For the same reasons I read and support LWN I discovered I needed to do the same with a quality news source for current events.  Find a good journalism outlet and support them.  Or two.  Read them online, read them on your Kindle, or find some time to read that thing somebody throws at your house in the morning.  Quality and professional journalism and news is not a luxury in the Information Age.