A new quotidian stop

Not that I miss journalism for a minute, but I sure do miss the full access to realtime news feeds that I once had in my former life. The sheer volume of what moved on any given day over the national and international wires was ungodly. Given that plus a twice- or thrice-weekly cruise through the op-ed and food (yes, I'm serious) wires, and who needed a subscription to anything else? (Except for Reason Magazine, natch.) I will say, however comma, that if I had to read just...one...more sports roundup with the phrase "bench-clearing brawl," I was going to spontaneously combust.

Nearly everyone at my former gazette had their wire-search and alert preferences set just so, and in a way that made Google News' customization options seem utterly kindergarten. AFAIK, there's still no equivalent on the web today that comes nigh close to what one can access with full membership in The Associated Press. (Someone recently asked me what that costs. "Um, beats me.")

Not that I have time to read much non-academic material these days.

I'm lucky to skim the entire front section of the Financial Times (print version) on my way to campus. But every few weeks I'll let my news junkie out for a romp. A tour through My Way News and WaPo's (buried) wire feed comes reasonably close to what my personal user keys (R.I.P., CSI) used to parse for me at The Big O - the "lede-writethru" flotsam and "strictly embargoed" jetsam from the must-do reading.

Even better, here's a site I was turned on to a couple of weeks ago that seems to scratch the itch for my dream homepage: Arts & Letters Daily. (Of course, with Firefox's tabbed browsing scheme, a mere homepage isn't just a singular homepage anymore ... it's a pluralist's wet dream!)

Two gems from the feed that caught my attention last week: The Claremont Institute's Encountering Islam, and The New Criterion's Hayek & the Intellectuals.

-30-