For the rest of the news, I am considering subscribing to a magazine that covers important events in Germany, the EU, or the world every few months. This kind of format filters out short-term noise and fear-driven stories.
Elections happen even less frequently than this. If your democracy disintegrates with less than a few months of warning, you were probably invaded and noticed even without the news; At this point, that would probably lead to a civil emergency notification on your phone, and by design that happens even without any apps installed.As we said in the UK in my childhood, "Today’s news is tomorrow’s chip* paper".
Personally I think once a week magazines / reviews are a good compromise. I’m not sure how useful reading 3 month old news will be.
The point being made by the author is that "following the news" nowadays has nothing to do with being informed. Instead, it became about being constantly bombarded by a barrage of noise and nonsense to constantly grab your attention.
So instead, by finding a monthly publication giving him an overview of the local, European and world news, the author is looking for a filter removing all the unnecessary noise. And the month granularity should be more than enough to allow him to be informed about important changes.
People who consume a lot of news tend to have very shallow understanding of a broad range of current events. Worse they tend to be passive receivers of news instead of active seekers of information with intent to understand the world.
As a result, they are very susceptible to manipulation through selection of what makes the news they tend to consume. They become passive pawns in political power struggles.
Even this is privilege. Try "one's identity".
Last year, legal immigrants were fine. Today, their kids are kidnapped and used as bait to take them to Alcatraz. And that's not even the identity I'm mostly referring to.
Very cool stance OOP, thank you for identifying yourself as the type of centrist heaven will reject at the gate and angels will never get tired of the reaction to the shrug.
No evidence supports your sentiment. Find an example of democracy that arose from citizens "being informed about what's happening." The Athenians limited democratic participation to a small educated elite. The American Founders had the same instinct, excluding more people than they included.
Demoracy dies in front of our eyes right now, in the USA, the most media-saturated culture in history. You might blame that on an ignorant and uncritical population. You might call them uninformed, or misinformed. As Jefferson understood the problem doesn't come from people not reading the news, but rather people not educated enough to understand, think critically, or even care.
Also - and maybe I'm naive for this - I don't really need news to inform my political opinion because the current state of affairs is so far from my ideal world. Like no matter what could reasonably occur in the news, I still know who I'm voting for on polling day.
There's nothing in the daily news cycle that is helpful for you, whilst there's lots that is bad for you.
There are other better ways to stay informed than to follow "the news".
Kidnapping kids is what they are doing?
The available news in October 2025 said "this is a question of when, not if".