Refresh was a simple concept that I started after the Charlie Kirk assassination last month. I desperately wanted to stay in touch with the news, but I also couldn’t ignore the mental toll I suffered from engaging with modern news cycles.
At the time, I thought that Refresh was the only solution.
But alongside writing these newsletters over the last month, I’ve also taken a deep-ish dive into independent, newsletter-based media. What I found was very promising.
As it turns out, several independent reporters have taken it upon themselves to solve the media crisis. Take Issac Saul, a reporter from Pennsylvania, for example. He created Tangle, a non-partisan newsletter that lands perfectly in the middle on The Media Bias Chart.
Tangle is a tangible solution to the same problem I set out to solve. Sadly, independent creators like Saul are often buried by algorithms and pages upon pages of Google results.
I also found this handy tool, the News Minimalist. It utilizes AI to source the most impactful stories of the week, and only sends the most important stories to your inbox. What’s deemed the most important is subjective, but I find it a good tool nonetheless.
After discovering these resources, I’ve realized that Refresh is unnecessary. Other platforms do the same thing, but in a more perfect form.
For the friends and family who subscribed to Refresh for support’s sake, thank you. I truly appreciate your generosity.
For those who subscribed out of a genuine desire to escape anxious, noisy news cycles, here’s my method of news engagement, inspired by Swiss theologian Karl Barth who instructed his students to read the newspaper alongside the Bible every morning.
Step One: Delete your news apps. Subscribe to Tangle and maybe News Minimalist. Read it most mornings over coffee.
Step Two: Read a chapter or two of Scripture before or after consuming your serving of news, allowing it to inform your reading.
Step Three: Pray.
Step Four: Ask somebody what they think about a pressing news topic at some point in your day.
Should we all practice something like this semi-daily, we will have conquered that ugly, haunting hack that is modern news. We will be free and informed – a dangerous duality that leaves corporate profiteers and totalitarian politicians running for the hills.