This Man Guzzles News So That You Don't Have To - Washingtonian

"I don't look at much of anything the night before, because I feel quite strongly that there could be something that happens at 3 AM that throws everything into complete chaos. Maybe I'm a moron for doing it this way, but I feel like it's not really until the next morning that you can say, "Okay, here's what's happened, and here's what people are probably going to be thinking about.""

"I used to get a lot of news from Twitter, but I realized it had become useless when the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore got destroyed by that ship. I immediately went to Twitter to try to find on-the-ground accounts of what was going on, but it was just all this conspiracy bullshit, because it was only surfacing people who pay for Twitter. So I decided to get off of there, because I just didn't think it was worthwhile for news anymore."

"I'm on Bluesky now, which kind of fills that need, but not anything like Twitter used to. I look at Instagram just for local stuff-like, Washingtonian Problems is a really good way of figuring out what people are thinking about here. But that's pretty much it. Some armchair math would suggest that you might be reading the news for at least 15 hours per week. Yeah, that's probably about right. How does that feel? Terrible. It feels terrible. There's nothing fun about the news anymore."

Late-night news checks are avoided to prevent being upended by unexpected overnight events; waiting until morning provides clearer perspective on developments and public reaction. Twitter was abandoned after seeing it amplify conspiracy content rather than reliable, on-the-ground reporting, particularly during a major infrastructure incident. Bluesky partially replaced that role, while Instagram is used mainly for local signals such as Washingtonian Problems. Self-reported news consumption approaches fifteen hours per week and produces persistent distress and exhaustion. The Kennedy Center incident was cited as a notably dark event encountered during the year.

Read at Washingtonian - The website that Washington lives by.