Five Top News Collectors

Two weeks ago, I posted my ten top blogs. I like blogs because bloggers do a lot of the reading and thinking for me. They appear to spend hours and hours running down the news, analyzing and synthesizing the information they unearth, posting their commentaries with links to the original stories.

However, I also like to find the news and do a little thinking for myself. The most efficient way for me to find the do this is to rely on news collectors. The “big two” are Buzzflash and Truthout. Raw Story and Antiwar.com also attract a lot of readers.

The five I’ve listed below are not that well known. I find news that is not commonly available elsewhere at these sites. I receive e-mail alerts from them, which makes it easy to know when they’ve posted new stories.

In random order, here they are:

1. The USC Center on Public Diplomacy. Each week John H. Brown sends me the “Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review,” typically linking to well over 50 news items and blogs. You may recall that John H. Brown, a career diplomat in the US Foreign Service, submitted his resignation to Secretary of State Colin Powell on March 10, 2003 because he could not support Bush’s war plans against Iraq.

2. The Global Security Newswire, a project of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, which is working to reduce threats from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. I’ve referred to the Global Security Newswire in several of my previous posts. If you want to find out what’s going on with North Korea’s agreement to stop its nuclear weapon program, check this source out. Today, there’s a story, North Korea Blames U.S. for Nuclear Deal Delays.

3. War in Context. My favorite blogger, Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com, frequently refers to War in Context, which the editor, Paul Woodward describes as “A daily record of America's post-9/11 impact on the world. Researched, edited and sprinkled with comments and commentary by Paul Woodward - editor[at]warincontext.org.”

4. Truthdig, “drilling beneath the headlines”: This is a lively site, full of photos and verges on being a blog. Check out the impressive list of writers here.

5. Information Clearing House. This is the only free source I've found of recent articles by Robert Fisk, who writes for the UK Independent and is my favorite war correspondent/journalist. The person responsible for this site, who describes himself here, appears to be pouring his heart into ICH without adequate funds. Of the five news collectors I’ve listed, evidently this is the only one struggling to make ends meet.

(photo- Europarl.Europa.eu)