News and media: knowing what you are reading

Every site in this category presents itself as informing you. They do not all do the same thing, and the differences matter more than the design suggests.

A newspaper site with a newsroom does original reporting: it has reporters who make calls, and a corrections policy because it sometimes gets things wrong. An aggregator republishes that work with a new headline. A commentary site reacts to it. A wire service supplies the underlying copy to all three. Reading a wire story on four sites is not four sources, and it is the most common way people mistake repetition for confirmation.

Two checks are worth the time. Does the site publish corrections? A site that never corrects anything is not more accurate than its competitors; it is less accountable. And does it disclose ownership? Media ownership shapes coverage, and outlets willing to state theirs are easier to read critically.

The subcategories cover newspapers, radio stations, magazines and news portals. Broadcast sites in particular often hold substantial archives that never appear in general search results, which is one of the better reasons to browse a category rather than search.