When I was the editor of a small Birmingham weekly newspaper, I often added content in the print edition from nonprofit news organizations based around the country. My reason: a lot of well-reported news on important topics just is not getting through to readers these days.
That’s because of the way the news business has changed — the rise of commentary disguised as news, the decline in the number of legitimate news providers, attention deficit and internet-driven changes in reading habits and comprehension, and the increasing skepticism coming from certain highly placed critics who particularly don’t like how their activities are covered.
Anyway, I thought our readers would benefit from exposure to the substantial amount of professional journalism which is out there if you just know where to look. I still think that’s true. So I’m going to try something here — a grassroots experiment in free news aggregation.
The plan is to share links to interesting stories collected from the websites of investigative, enterprise, and other long-form news providers like ProPublica, which covers a wide array of public interest topics, The Hechinger Report which covers education in a particularly thoughtful way, and Kaiser Health News, which keeps watch on medicine, health, and the businesses and policies that drive them. As well as FactCheck.org – just because.
Here’s the first edition:
How to spot real fake news/ProPublica
https://www.propublica.org/article/ask-propublica-illinois-how-do-you-identify-fake-news
Changing student mindsets leads to success/The Hechinger Report
http://hechingerreport.org/teaching-kids-not-to-be-scared-of-math-might-help-them-achieve/
The fight against nightmare bacteria/Kaiser Health News
https://khn.org/news/nightmare-bacteria-stalk-u-s-hospitals/
Trump wants the death penalty for drug dealers. Will that work?/FactCheck.org
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/04/qa-the-death-penalty-for-drug-trafficking/
I hope you enjoy this news you might otherwise miss. Feel free to tell me what you think.
Nick Patterson Freelance 
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