My News Diet
How I get the news without losing my mind
Last spring, an Ohio State University survey found that nearly half of the adults in the U.S. reported being stressed out at least once a week from reading the news. That seems pretty low, don’t you think?
Whatever the numbers, news fatigue is a real thing and a lot of us feel overwhelmed, anxious, and sad. I was at the flea market in Paris this past weekend when I overheard three American women talking about it. One of them said she had measured her blood pressure while reading the New York Times, and it shot sky high. Yikes!
After working in and around the media for the past twenty years, I’ve found a few ways to counteract this problem. But first, a bit of history.
I had a massive case of news fatigue in 2017. Healthcare communications had become a battleground as the first Trump administration tried to repeal the ACA. (Thank you, John McCain, wherever you are.) By March of that year, I was so burned out I had to escape to a ranch in the Colorado Rockies. At one point I remember sitting atop a lovely paint, bawling my eyes out and wondering if they needed another ranch hand.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t just quit my job and muck out stalls for a living. I had to figure out how to consume and respond to the news on a daily basis—without letting it kill me.
Then it hit me that this was a lot like my experience finding out years ago that I was pre-diabetic. Back then, I’d thought of food as something to grab and go. I ate what was easiest to find and I didn’t really think about it. At the time, my doctor suggested I keep a food diary and stay very present when I was eating. I followed his advice, and it completely changed my food habits. My blood sugar levels have been fine since then.
Conscious curation over mass consumption
After returning from Colorado, I realized my news habits needed the same awareness as my diet. I needed to stay present with what what I was “eating.” I wrote a little news diary for a few days, and then asked myself questions about it:
Did I choose a certain article because it informs me or because it’s easy to grab?
How many clickbait headlines sent me down an anxious rabbit hole today?
Am I giving myself a little “treat” of humor now and then?
I also noted how anxious I was that day, the whole thing was an eye opener. Slowly, I started reading only the news or articles that didn’t make my own blood pressure jump, at least not so much. Today, I’m consuming news even more carefully.
The diet
Being conscious of what I plan to read and where I plan to read it keeps me out of the junk news aisle. It’s a strategy based on a bit of control, staying present, and a dash of downright avoidance when necessary. The diet changes sometimes, but here is where it stands right now:
Fast Feed: AP Newswire
AP is my baseline feed, offering up speed, accuracy, and global coverage. It gives me raw facts before spin or opinion enters. It grounds me in what actually happened, and its breaking news feature on the app keeps me aware of things I really need to know.
Global Lens: France 24
France 24 adds perspective outside of a U.S.-centric lens. It provides both European context and international balance. It often helps me see stories differently than through American outlets. Also, U.S. news typically hits France 24 a little later, which helps me stay away from total terror when the distraction tactics are in high gear.
I live in Paris part-time, so France 24 is an obvious choice. But you could read El Mundo, or another European paper just the same. After binge watching Borgen, I’ve been meaning to try the Danish paper Berlingske but I can’t figure out how to translate it to English.
Deep Dive: Substack
I follow a little group of long-form writers for deeper analysis and trends. These pieces help me connect breaking news to larger patterns. For some reason it doesn’t stimulate the flight-or-fight response either. So I regularly read people like:
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich
Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark
Andy Borowitz for a good laugh
Heather Cox Richardson
Trend Tracker: Facebook
I do get news from Facebook, but it’s more about taking a pulse of what’s going on. Some people are just plain hilarious, and I always love a good meme. But mostly I want to know what’s trending. I follow a lot of media folks for that reason on FB too. My good friend publicist Lisa Braun Dubbels, local journalists I trust, and some other solid folks that post good stuff.
The Pulse Test
As I was writing this, I decided to play a round of news Russian roulette..., just to see what would happen to my pulse. I picked the same Trump story on four outlets, and observed what happened to my pulse.
My stress grows substantially not from content alone, but from who’s telling me what happened.
As I mentioned, I don’t read the New York Times. I find it sensationalist and stress-inducing. And as far as broadcast news? After pitching stories for 20 years, I’ve watched its degradation from the inside and lost faith in its objectivity. Because I wanted to see how much difference the source made in my tension level, I did throw one in the test, however.
For my the test I chose a story about Trump’s recent flip-flop on his knowledge of Project 2025. Here’s what happened:
Reading AP News was like getting the straight minutes of a meeting, dates, charges, statements, next steps. I felt informed, scared, but not entirely rattled.
In the New York Times, I felt like I was reading a political thriller: Trump’s every glance described, dire warnings about democratic backsliding, and plenty of “what it all means.” My stress level jumped considerably.
With France 24, I got the story in the detached air of a lecture hall. There was a good analysis of how Europe reads Trump’s moves, a sad look at U.S. credibility abroad. My pulse was still high, but not too bad.
Fox News, on the other hand, turned the whole thing into a victim narrative, with anchors railing about bias and portraying Trump as vindicated. That one didn’t make me anxious so much as exhausted. Needless to say, I won’t be doing that again soon.
As you can see, my stress grows substantially not from content alone, but from who’s telling me what happened.
Closing Thoughts
Just like a healthy food diet, a good news diet needs balance, variety, and awareness of what we consume. With so much evidence linking unfiltered news consumption to stress, anxiety, and even physical health issues, taking control of our media intake might be about more than just basic self-care.
As my little experiment showed, the same story can leave you calm, agitated, or downright exhausted depending on who’s telling it. It’s not about fighting misinformation anymore. We’ve lost that battle, just as we’ve lost the battle against junk food marketers. It’s about maintaining equanimity.
Just like what I eat, what I put in my brain is a daily conscious decision.
Consciously curating the news means staying informed in a way that doesn’t burn me out or make me feel powerless. Some days that means AP for the facts and France 24 for perspective. Some days, it means staying away completely from reading anything to give my nervous system a break.
What about you? How do you maintain a good news diet?
This is such a smart approach to consuming news. The idea of treating it like a food diet realy resonates with me. I love that you included Borowitz in your list becuase humor is genuinely medicinal when you're trying to stay informed without losing your mind. His satire gives you permission to laugh at the absurdity while still engaging with what's happening, and that's such a necesary balance right now. Thanks for sharing this framework, it's super helpful.