How I got news for me!

Since I am in the UK, my access to newspapers and magazines is quite limited. Earlier, atleast I would have the Sun regularly, coz the cafe in Amex was huge and you were confident that someone would leave their Sun (or Daily Express) behind. For those who don't know, they are a must see rather than a must read.


Its not that that's only the kind of news is what appeals me. For the record, I would never buy the Sun. We do buy the weekend Guardian or Sunday Telegraph. Guardian has been a strong favorite, but since it has goe Berliner, it seems to have lost its charm. I am no longer set on buying only the Guardian.


Back to why I started this blog entry. Well, in spite of my limited touch with newspapers and the like, I have found that for real analysis and interpretation of any news, I am relying more and more on blogs. Of course, you can't trust them all, but with prolong experience trawling the blogsphere, one comes to accumulate the gleaming specks of diamonds out there - My favorites list is continuously growing.


Generally each blog has a theme and the kind of insight some bloggers bring into that topic is phenomenal. Watch Dilip D'souza expound ever so beautifully and subtly about issues that plague the urban (and sometimes not so) lives. Read the complete outsider, Vikrum's interpretation of various facets of Indian-ness. His open mindedness and inquisitiveness always has me in awe. Read George Thomas for opinionated (and totally his) reviews about latest movies that he has watched back to back to back. Jai for book reviews. Somehow, Slashdot and wired also classify as a blog and both are just full of new info about the digital world.

There are umpteen mad blogs out there as well, which will have you rolling in your cubicles.


There are mighty more out and so many that I revered have fallen by my wayside as I discover better ones.
Juxtopose these against the news portal out there. Mumbai Mirror, Indian Express, rediff, Hindustan Times, all of them supply news, but the edits, research articles or general analysis columns are somehow not easily available. That makes the available e-news material so dull and insipid. Web provides a great oppputinity to link a new item to another, thus taking the reader through all possible related news and educating him about the topic in a far superior manner to a folded sheet. CNet has a great tool exploiting this, but most news site, just do a subset of the printed work and post it online.


Outlook and Business World (has gone typically subscriptional) are only two Indian news sites, which augment the pulp material with great noteworthy and meaningful stuff online. Given the slight non-reliability of information pouring out of blogger qwertys, it would be great to have more propah news groups publishing informative stuff online.