How to stay sane *AND* informed

One counterintuitive trick for getting your news diet in order

Matt Kiser starts his day with a blitzkrieg of tabs. First, he opens up the homepages of more than a dozen major news organizations. Then, he opens every story on every page that interests him. Once his tab bar grows so crowded that the headers shrink to lines — “it’s some real Rain Man shit,” Kiser acknowledges¹ — he begins the laborious process of clicking through each article and grouping stories on overlapping subjects.

This is how Kiser makes sense of a frenzied, disorienting news environment, for both himself and his 200,000 readers. Since 2017, the prolific writer and curator has published an invaluable daily newsletter called What the Fuck Just Happened Today?, in which he digests the chaos of U.S. politics and policy “for normal people.” A typical edition includes a one-sentence summary of the day’s events (inevitably, a many-claused run-on) and blurbs summarizing between five and 20 news stories, drawn from multiple mainstream publications.

Even with Kiser’s systematic approach, however, navigating this particular news environment has lately become more difficult. President Donald Trump seems determined to set new records for political and administrative chaos, besting the high score he himself set during his first administration. Meanwhile, the continued fragmentation of the news media means that people now encounter more content from more sources across more platforms than ever before. In recent weeks, some Democrats and media critics have begun discussing news and information overload as a growing crisis: a phenomenon that prevents voters from understanding the news — and keeps them from acting on it.

But people like Kiser have found a counterintuitive solution: a way to build resilience in the face of a news cycle designed to burn us out. “We have a scarcity of time and an abundance of information,” Kiser told me. “I think you have to intentionally slow down.”

“The paralysis is the point”

If you struggle to stay informed without losing your mind, you’re far from alone. In 2022, the American Psychological Association warned that growing numbers of Americans were suffering from what one therapist termed “media saturation overload” — a specialized sort of stress that results from encountering a steady, ceaseless “drumbeat” of negative news. In the few short weeks since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, that drumbeat has only picked up. The writer

Anne Helen Petersen

recently described feeling the strain of the news cycle in her body, like a kind of unresolved trauma.

The current chaos is deliberate, to be clear. The Trump administration wants you overwhelmed. Since January 20, the president has issued a record number of (variably legal) executive orders as part of a cynical political strategy that his former advisor, Steve Bannon, once dubbed “flooding the zone with shit.” The idea is to turn up the volume so loud — to open a battle on so many fronts — that no one, including Congress, the judiciary, or the public, can effectively keep up.

In that quest, Trump and his henchmen have been aided by larger, foundational changes to the news and media ecosystem, which is also a hell of a lot noisier than it used to be. The rapid rise of independent, partisan and alternative media outlets and creators — including newsletters like this one! — means there are more news sources than ever before, generating an ever-larger and more unmanageable volume of information. Meanwhile, more than half of Americans now pluck some or most of their news from infinite, algorithmically filtered social feeds — which never end, never pause and optimize for views and shares over loftier goals like truth or understanding.

Together, these forces have both accelerated and flattened the news: Everything happens all at once, and everything is a crisis. “It’s important for you to understand that the paralysis and shock that you feel right now is the point,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said last week. “They are trying to induce a state of passivity among the general public.”

“[This] media environment … keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.”

At its most extreme, this passivity manifests as “news avoidance” —the deliberate, sustained choice to not consume news. In interviews with consistent news avoiders, who now represent an estimated 8% of American adults, researchers have found that people are often motivated to minimize anxiety, uncertainty and discomfort. Disengagement becomes a form of self-preservation.

But I’d argue that reclaiming our attention — and rebuilding our media diets to withstand this environment — is both an act of self-care and a moral imperative. Self-care because, obviously, it does our bodies, minds, and lifespans no good to live in a constant state of stress. A moral imperative because understanding threats to democratic systems is a prerequisite to defending them. In a sharp essay for 404 Media that I shared last weekend, the artist and tech writer Janus Rose argued that passive news consumption on social media has left otherwise concerned and civic-minded people disempowered and overwhelmed.

“The result,” she wrote, “is a media environment that keeps us in a state of debilitating fear and anger, endlessly reacting to our oppressors instead of organizing against them.”

Reclaiming “the edge”

Over the past week or so, and with all these anxieties and concerns in mind, I’ve been looking to retool my own media diet. I get almost none of my politics or policy news from social media now, but I do rely on a different type of endless scroll: I use Readwise Reader to follow the RSS feeds of more than 50 news and media orgs, and I subscribe to scores of digests, aggregators and newsletters on top of that — more than 150 on Substack, alone. It takes me a couple hours each day to scan all these sources and read the articles of interest. (Is this a good use of my one wild and precious life? That very much depends on the number of you who upgrade to paid subscriptions.)

In theory, I’ve designed my current media diet to give me a commanding, birds-eye view of the media environment, which is important for writing this newsletter and working as a journalist. But when it comes to political news — which I generally don’t cover,² and thus consume more as a very concerned citizen — I sometimes feel like I’m standing at the base of some fucked-up virtual waterfall, with thousands of gallons of dense, icy water pounding down ceaselessly on my head.

Kiser has seen this phenomenon before. In fact, it’s the problem he set out to address eight years ago when he launched What the Fuck Just Happened Today?. “At the end of the day, I think most people — those who are doomscrolling the news and feeling like they have to read everything — would be better served by doing less,” he told me. “You don’t have to be a hero.” Well … that’s reassuring!

Kiser himself deliberately does not get news from social media, TV or what he terms “second-order publishers”: outlets that don’t conduct original reporting themselves. And while he does aggregate from many sources in his daily digests, he thinks most news consumers are pretty well-served by picking a single “first-order” publisher that they like and trust and reading its political coverage for a set time each day — preferably in some self-limiting format, like a newsletter or print edition.

Kiser’s background is in news products — he previously worked as a product manager for Spin, Forbes and Business Insider — and he’s fascinated by how the way information is packaged shapes our experience of it. He’s been particularly influenced by the writer and photographer Craig Mod, who in a 2012 essay coined the concept of “edges”: the ways physical media signal that you’ve done enough or reached the end. Digital and social media generally have no edges, Mod observed, which can lead to patterns of compulsive, mindless consumption. Readers are never nudged to pause or “breathe,” which can heighten their sense of urgency, overwhelm and stress. (These pauses are also presumably when we might process and prioritize what we’ve read — a prerequisite for political or civic action.)

Kiser’s big recommendation, to me and other deluged readers: Reintroduce the edges to your media diet. Seek out content with a clear beginning and end, something you can pick up and put down at will. An NPR podcast has edges, for instance; an NPR livestream doesn’t. Kiser’s newsletter has edges, too, though the homepages he tabs through each morning are edgeless. Incidentally, this recommendation mirrors the advice of many psychologists, who encourage overwhelmed news consumers to establish “boundaries” around their media diets. Here’s one case where more may actually be less.

Where I ended up

This is not necessarily what I expected when I set out to retool my own news consumption. In fact, I started out by inviting Links readers, friends and fellow journalists to suggest their favorite news sources to me, and I sampled dozens of popular politics newsletters, creators and podcasts. I envisioned this edition as a comprehensive guide to the many, many voices, outlets and resources in this space; my working title, in fact, was “resources for tracking the Trump administration.”

But as so often happens when you actually get out and interview some people and do some research, I concluded that my original idea was … not very productive. It doesn’t serve me, and it doesn’t serve you, to mainline political news and commentary all day long. Instead, I needed a strategy that preserved my time to think and act, while still getting me the day’s most essential information.

So here’s where I ended up: I subscribe to WTFJHT. (Obviously. Lol.) I’ve also started listening to NPR’s “Up First,” a 10-minute morning news digest, as I let the dog out and make breakfast.³ On the advice of my friend Ryan Kellett, who studies the news creator space, and Alexios Mantzarlis, who writes a great newsletter on digital media and misinformation, I’ve also subscribed to Tangle, a daily newsletter that promises to summarize coverage and commentary from across the political spectrum.

To be clear: I still have all those RSS feeds that I check every day. And there are many, many other outlets and authors I read and/or support in my internet travels. (On Sunday, for instance, I mentioned Wired, El País and

Emily Amick

, all of which I consider valuable and fascinating for vastly different reasons.) But in terms of building a sustainable, resilient daily politics diet — a habit that keeps me engaged with the news long-term, without burning me up or stressing me out — those three sources are my essential nutrients.⁴

Other sources will work better for you, of course, according to your habits and preferences. I’m including a list of other suggestions from friends, readers and experts below. (Many thanks, in particular, to Dave Pell of

NextDraft

, Jonathan Skolnick of Vanity Fair and

Lex Roman

of Journalists Pay Themselves, who suggested lots of good resources.) But remember that the key is to find media with edges: a discrete beginning and an end. Kiser told me he’s lately gotten really into physical media (… including, hilariously, short ebooks that he prints off the internet and tapes into little punk-rock pamphlets) for this exact, strategic reason.

“People get drunk on the idea of needing to know every little thing that happened right now: just pull to refresh!” he said. “But I think the single best way to hedge against burning out on the news is to have a more dedicated reading experience.

“We really need to find places to stop and take a break on the internet.”

Further resources

My essential nutrients: What The Fuck Just Happened Today?, Up First, Tangle

Matt Kiser’s “first-order” sources (in the order he opens them): The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, Axios, The Associated Press, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, NBC News, ABC News, The Guardian, BBC, Reuters, CBS News

Other recommendations from Links readers and friends:

• News aggregators and digests: Today in Tabs⁵ | News Not Noise | NextDraft | Musk Watch | What A Day

• Political analysis and commentary: Letters From An American | The Bulwark | The Preamble | The Message Box | Thinking About … | Bolts Magazine | Wake Up to Politics | Crises Notes | Swamp Person | Doomsday Scenario | Noahpinion | Programmable Mutter

• Trackers and watchdogs: Trump Golf Tracker | POTUS Tracker | Democracy 2025 Response Center | Just Security: Legal Challenges Tracker

Comments are open on this post, so feel free to also add your suggestions.

1. Matt could scarcely get through his description of this process, because I kept reflexively gasping and cackling and interrupting him. It is so deeply chaotic. I thought he’d also be an RSS person or, at MINIMUM, that he’d keep his favorite sources in some kind of bookmark app, but he legit just command+Ts through a dozen+ homepages — the exact URLs and order of which he has memorized through literal years of practice.

2. Well, okay — I did work for several months as a contributing politics writer at Vanity Fair. But that gig ended a few weeks ago and was something of a professional aberration.

3. There are many, many podcasts in this genre, and I think I’ve listened to most of them at least once. Up First remains a perennial favorite: short, often a little hokey and reliably comprehensive.

4. Jury is frankly still out on Tangle.

5. Also an eternal Links favorite.