Weekly current events round-up?

[wingedradical]

Can someone direct me to a resource that condenses the news at about a middle school level? I'm not looking for news features or commentary but raw news.Can be a printed, internet or cable source. The first two are preferred since I don't actually subscribe to cable but I can have relatives record if necessary.

[duckens]

When I was in 7th Grade, twice a week, we actually had "Current Events."

 

Our year-long assignment from Mr. Campbell was to (twice a week) write down on paper the headlines for 8 major topics. We were taught how to look at the different parts of a newspaper to get this information, but we could also cull the information from television news.

 

The topics were:

 

1) International

2) National

3) State

4) Local

5) Editorials or Editorial Cartoons

6) ??Feature?? Weather?? Entertainment?? Science/Technology?? I can't remember!

7) Sports

8) Personal: what's happening in your life today?

 

Then in high school, a friend invited me to join the Extemporaneous Speaking (on Current Events) team. I learned the Gold Standard for being informed (in the 1980s) was the magazines of Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. Other sources were also used, but this was the tripod of fact sources. I learned to read several sources for a topic, and I learned to read and know well the opposing view points of a topic (as a debater would do).

 

I share this because

1) I don't think that regular news sources are too old for Middle Schoolers to start learning about our country and our world politically.

2) The strength of Mr. Campbell's system was to be able to glean cursory information from a number of sources.

3) I also learned ability to identify a good source vs. a bad source.

 

These experiences have made me a well educated, well informed voter and citizen. I hated the Current Events unending assignments at the time, but it is one of those classes that affected me far deeper, and far longer than anything else I probably learned in all of Middle School.

I meet so many people my age (43 today! :party: ) who talk about becoming "more informed" after 9-11, or after some other event within the last decade. I'm glad they are more involved in the political system, but I've been actively following these players (in our government, in the media) since 1982. They look flabbergasted when I cite chapter and verse of anything that happened more than 10 years ago. They never knew!

 

A word of warning:

Being well informed has gradually changed my politics, my pov of social issues, and my religious affiliation. There was no one thing that changed it, but decades of watching our government, our courts, and our leaders.

 

***Concerning Time, Newsweek, and U.S News and World Report: Print is dying. This doesn't mean that good journalism needs to die. Media is learning how to provide good, in-depth journalism for even the local level in the Cyberworld. We are watching this happen. There are growing pains.

[TarynB]

Concerning Time, Newsweek, and U.S News and World Report: Print is dying. This doesn't mean that good journalism needs to die. Media is learning how to provide good, in-depth journalism for even the local level in the Cyberworld. We are watching this happen. There are growing pains.

 

Duckens, I loved your post. Can you recommend any specific online media outlets you currently believe to be reliable sources to replace the specific "dying" print media you referenced? Are the websites of Time, Newsweek, or U.S News and World Report (if they exist, I'm not able to look online at the moment) currently as good as their hard copies are or once were? Thank you!

[duckens]

Disclaimer: I am a liberal.

 

National/International:

 

CNN is my homepage. Whenever I get online, CNN pops up. Of course, I need to be vigilant to read the actual news, and not go after sensationalist stories of Casey Anthony or such. It is easy to be distracted by @#&% like that rather than what our leaders are doing, or by what is happening in Middle East. This is where judgment of what is good news vs. bad news comes in.

 

PBS Evening News impresses me again and again. I don't get time to watch it every night, but:

--It is one hour of news, not just 30 minutes

--No commercials, there is no problem with offending potential revenue with a story, there are no distractions in the middle of the news, and time set aside for serious in-depth reporting and series on a multitude of topics.

--The broadcaster's chair is shared by a half-dozen reputable journalists. Different people host different nights. This strengthens the program because if one journalist needs to travel to do a deeper, more time consuming story on their specialty (finance, international, political, etc), someone else smoothly moves into the chair. No one is limited by needing to be in the chair every night at 5:30pm.

--They consistently show both sides of the story and ask critical questions of EVERYONE. This carries over to PBS's news magazine (listed below).

--Reputation

 

 

National Public Radio (NPR) -- I know there are those who will cite NPR as a lefty news source. However NPR has the most balanced listenership of any national news source: 55% Liberal, 45 % Conservative. They must be doing something right.

 

MegaVote: How Congress is Voting: sends an email to you every week or so. It lists the votes congress has taken recently, how your representative votes, and any upcoming votes. EVERYONE SHOULD SUBSCRIBE TO THIS SO THEY KNOW WHAT THEIR CONGRESS IS DOING!!!

 

In-depth -- This is where a lot of background comes from that many wannabe informed citizens just do not have to connect the dots. It's kinda embarrassing when I know more about Montana's political money history and system (and the Supreme Court) than my sister who has lived there for two decades. (I have visited Montana three times).

 

Frontline (PBS) has many political documentaries. I just rewatched the one about the Housing Mortgage Crisis, and why our government is not prosecuting any of the executives that committed alleged fraud. I've also watched docs through them on Michelle Rhee, Climate Science, Crime Scene Investigation, Political Money in Montana, and Retirement Fund charges.

 

Need to Know (PBS) is PBS's equivalency to 20/20, 60 Minutes, or Dateline. For those who again claim it is a lefty liberal source, they should watch it. It's predecessor (NOW) was my source for Sarah Palin. They did a VERY positive story about her cleaning up Alaskan politics a couple of years before she was named as McCain's running mate. All of my Republican friends said, "Sarah who??????", but I knew all about her history and her rise to the Alaskan Governorship long before she arrived in the eye of the national media. This is just one example the type of stories covered by Need to Know.

 

Need to Know is just NOW rebranded. Many of the same journalists report, with the same format.

 

American Experience: is history documentaries, but it can give color to today's news. I watched 4 hours of the Reagan administration, and 4 hours of Clinton. The CCC mitigated the worst of the Depression and prepped us for WWII. The Triangle Factory Fire explains the beginnings of OSHA.

 

Local

 

This is my weakest source, and not followed enough. We just use the same station we use for local weather, usually online. Sometimes I turn on the early morning news (6am) if I am up early washing dishes. Our state homeschool group emails us if something homeschooling of importance arrives in our state legislature.

 

Editorial -- Warning: skewed left. However, this loses some of its bias by knowing it is skewed.

 

Slate and Daily Kos--I'm sure there are conservative sources, too. I am not sure how much of these sources are opinion and how much is good journalism. I wonder if Online Journalism is in the same place as print media was 100 years ago.

 

I have (sometimes weekly or daily) watched portions of Glenn Beck, Fox and Friends, Megyn Kelly, and Bill O'Reilly. This is part of not living in a bubble and being open to the other side of the discussion. One is not well informed if one only receives what one wants to hear.

 

Rachel Maddow Show mixes history with journalism and editorializing. An example is her history of the federal government infringing on 4th Amendment Rights, and the Constitution always smacking down any presidents or executives who overstep. This was the background on the Snowden situation.

[TarynB]

 

Duckens, thank you for such a thorough list!

[Farrar]

The Week.

 

The print edition is very concise. There's almost no bias. It's literally just the facts. It's meant for adults, but it's probably at about a middle school level, so I think it would be fine to use with middle and high schoolers.

 

Note that The Week covers *all* kinds of news, so there are pages devoted to real estate, business, consumer news, movies, art exhibits, people/celebrity news and even a recipe of the week - this is in addition to the political news and the world news and so forth. Columns are summarized. There's a feature I like called "How They See Us" about the US in the foreign press. Everything is short - some of it is blurbs, but there are a few longer pieces - longer being relative as nothing in The Week is long. There is a nice weekly feature that is a sort of FAQ about a timely topic. At the end, there's a two page excerpt of a feature story that's often very interesting.

[duckens]

I also wanted to share about "Need to Know" (vs. Dateline or 20/20 or such):

Need to Know is not sensationalistic.

 

On weeks when Dateline is talking about the Murder of the week, I'm learning about "Medical Tort Reform in the U.S. and Abroad." Or rather than Yet Another Show About Hurricane Sandy, I'm learning about a program that supports companies from having to lay off workers by letting the workers go on "partial unemployment." (Companies cut hours by 1/5, but get to keep their trained employees through lean times; the government only pays a percent of unemployment as opposed to full unemployment with food stamps and Medicaid.)