Relic of ancient times "bread and games" (panem et circenses), time when people were politically manipulated with biggest distraction. I am thinking there is no cooking news, or musical news... Sport news are about what other people do, not what we personally do. There is no science block, gaming block, music block ... but along weather there is sport section?!

I do not in this moment, I do not know, it just feel strange and off, is there anyone else who shares similar feeling?

Update: Sorry, for not being clear, I specifically meant TV news, you know prime time. News, from country to country the one it is on around 8pm each day...

There are lots of things in the news that some people don't care about - they report on traffic (or at least they used to) even though many people don't commute. They report on the stock market even though many people aren't invested. These days they sometimes report on Bitcoin and other crypto, even though the vast majority of the world has no interest. Speaking of the world, they report on world news that most people don't care about, because they're only interested in their own country.

The news reports on things that people care about. A lot of people care greatly about sports. Just because you're not one of them doesn't mean it's strange to report on them.

i'd also like to see a service which shows me the news about subjects which have managed to stay in the news for at least a week. just drop all the 24-48 hour rage/hype cycles.

Another thing is especially in the last five years or so the number of pointless articles that do not inform or do real anything that end up as news just is too high. The article that is third or fourth to the post can be 100x more valuable in actually showing references or deeper analysis. It's ok to put the news on hold to stop eating your time/money. Also ditch 95% of opinion articles as hopeless.

That's great if you have time to read whatever it is and/or have the knowledge to parse through the language. Most folks aren't going to read the paper nor the overall decision. Time constraints, stress, and simply not being educated in the field (or understanding legal terms) keep folks from doing this.

On top of that, there are definitely times that the news is the primary source. Where else are you going to learn about war, drought, weather, protests, food recalls, and other such things? You'll probably find weather, but nothing on protests. Sure, you can go to "sources", but you have to actively find them.

News might not be the same as it was, but it isn't like it doesn't still have a use.

I'd really like to have rules about headlines/reporting accurately portraying things, but that's a conversation for another time.

Another commenter mentioned the stock market report. Again, easy reliable filler material. Despite the fact that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has a tenuous effect at best for the vast majority of people, and despite the fact that it's not a great overall economic indicator, the news media report it because it's easy, and it changes daily.

Truly "newsworthy" stories are not guaranteed to happen every day. But the news media still need to fill space regardless. That's why they love things that reliably change on a daily basis. "Team A beat Team B" is such an easy story to write. It practically writes itself. Compare with true investigative reporting, which is extremely difficult, may take months or years, and may or may not have publishable results. How much investigative reporting can you do and still have a daily news report?

Why does the news media always cover elections as if they were horse races (and inevitably lament that in retrospect with crocodile tears for exactly 1 week after the election before forgetting and doing it again the same way the next election)? Because it's easy. You could say lazy. Candidate A is up in the polls this week, Candidate B is down. Such an easy story to write. You can keep taking polls, and keep publishing polls, and you've filled a bunch of news space cheaply.

Don't even get me started on how the "news" is now largely publishing tweets written by other people. The ultimate in journalistic laziness.

I sort of think the radical idea is that a "news aggregator" is some new thing that can operate without editorial standards. People should be mocking Google for the shit job they do highlighting content.

1) Some news is important, purely for social (not informational) reasons. When you show up to the office, you want to know why everyone's talking about Miley Cyrus! And you need to know who won the Superbowl, even if you have no interest.

2) News does have explanatory power, but mostly in weekly mags like The Economist, New Yorker, etc., and occasionally in analysis pieces by the NYT. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But to my first point -- I would love a service that would "curate" the need-to-know headlines, to send to me every morning/afternoon. Where each headline had a numerical score or increasing importance (say, 1-5), and I could choose to subscribe to all headlines of 5, and all headlines 3-5 in tech, for example. The important thing being that this is not a simple daily digest, but that I'd only receive it when there was something newsworthy -- plenty of days, you'd receive nothing at all.