Here's a letter I wrote in response to an inquiry from an old friend.
"We need to start getting more news into our home... World Magazine is a no-brainer but as far as "newspaper" news? Wall Street Journal? Local? Unintended consequences we haven't thought of?"
Dear Christie*, (home-schooling mom of 6, ages 2-12, name changed to protect the innocent!)
World Magazine is good. They usually just copy leading news for global events, but often have excellent cultural critique. Marvin Olasky's book reviews and last page articles are worth it - probably old ones are online free. They do life feature stories I usually find irrelevant and skip, and they sometimes "engage with the culture" in ways that are too open to things I consider an obvious leftist agenda. Example: today's podcast had on one of the hosts of "Just Thinking" podcast, Darrell Harrison. He was excellent on racial reconciliation, how critical theory is by nature Marxist and leftist identity politics. World felt the need to say they were going to balance it with another view in the future. Grrr. Also, Olasky seems to publish more interviews with Democrats than Republicans. Weird.
The magazine is great for OLDER kids to flip through, though articles are occasionally more adult themed - trafficking, etc. I think they still put out a kids version, or you can preview an issue before showing them. They also have a 3 minute video with Brian Bashem that I've seen - good for kids, no need to filter. Online may be a better option than the print magazine, so you can select articles that would be useful for the kids. If you don't need up to the minute news, you don't have to pay for it, usually.
Local news is important, but hard to come by without the weirdness of local papers. Often their local stuff is online for free - I'd check that out. You can then skip the national news there and get it from better places. Our local paper syndicates with USA Today network, and it is AWFUL. The local news reporting is usually sub-par, but at least raises local issues. For example, our paper is running a front page article every day on various state house and senate races. They often don't tell you much, but at least you have names and offices to google!
One helpful exercise as a home schooling mom of - are they age 12 on down now? - is that you can decide what flavor of news they should get. And that helps you think more deliberately about it for yourSELF, instead of just scrolling Facebook. They're a little young for all the political op-eds yet, probably.
News articles make great case studies for students, regarding logical fallacies, fact or opinion distinctions, and examples of persuasion via bias or selective facts. Your older kids are probably ready for that. Yes, you actually want them to argue with you! Teach them how.
(I'm reminded of the liberal West Wing episode, where the cool (liberal) policy guy confronted the despised conservative Supreme Court candidate about some issue. His response: "You don't want to use that argument. It's too easy to counter and defeat in court. You want to argue this way on that issue. But then you have to consider this...")
Start thinking with them, instead of just giving them information - I'm sure you know that transition at which your older ones have arrived!
As my wife told you, we didn't do much with news when our kids were your age. If I had it to do again, I'd make it a home school mini-class - have them read an article and then talk or write about it. In the 10-15 age range, to start.
For adult news consumption - I have a hard time.
Mainly Wall Street Journal for best news, and Ben Shapiro for opinion, these days.
WSJ is expensive at regular price, but they run sales for $1 a week for a limited time now and then. Then it's $40/mo. or more! Once they talked me down when I called to cancel, but it was still around $20/mo, I think. I just cancelled today, and they didn't offer that but just gave me a refund. Reading and copying the best articles at your library may be the best option. Or waiting a week for them to drop the paywall on good articles. Their Saturday version has a wealth of cultural articles, book reviews, etc. There is also junk to filter out: features of mansions, high end fashion, etc. Today they featured Jeffrey Epstein's mansions up for sale - obscene luxury! WSJ are more friendly to China economically than I am these days, because their main priority is economic growth. Though they are one of the hardest critics of China on their opinion pages at the same time, so it's complicated.
Ben Shapiro is hard nosed and throws insults too much, but his view/opinion is usually correct, I think. Free podcast an hour long, skip the ads! He's part of (owns?) Daily Wire, a network of speakers. Their business model is pretty aggressive, which is annoying, but viewpoints of folks like Matt Walsh is often enlightening.
I think it's important to read a center/left source on some things, like NYT, NPR, or The Atlantic. I just don't spend too much time there. There are times they expose logical flaws in Shapiro or Rush Limbaugh, though, and that's very helpful mentally to stay sharp, and to not drink the FOX/right wing Koolaid completely. Reading the NYT and WSJ editorials side by side is often enlightening, but time consuming.
Online, I used to read Drudge (headlines too sensational) and Fox (racy ads). I asked Doug Wilson years ago where he got his news, and he said Politico, but David Bahnsen tells me now that they've gone woke liberal, so you never know. Bahnsen is on World and is very good for COVID and market info - "Dividend Cafe" and "Off the Cufflink" are his good podcasts. I believe he is the son of renowned apologist Greg Bahnsen.
Open to hearing your take on the best sources for news and opinion!
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