TV news programs and print news have a hard time these days competing with the light speed of Internet news reporting. And while Twitter can be a fluff source of information for celebrity gossip and silly Internet trends, the little blue bird can also be likened to the modern version of the messenger pigeon. Except this blue messenger pigeon works a whole lot faster. (Just ask anyone following the events in Ferguson, Mo., where they have been looking for news on the subject lately.)
1. Huffington Post – @HuffingtonPost Twitter Bio: internet lovers | sleep believers | news addicts | big font obsessives | greek yogurt fans Followers: 4.37M Need for Feed: HuffPo is often accused of just recycling and spitting out news from other sources. But they aggregate the best news, and not everyone has time to read every paper. HuffPo gives your phone little golden buzzes of news.
2. Reuters Top News – @Reuters Twitter Bio: Top and breaking news, pictures, and videos from Reuters. Followers: 4.68M Need for Feed: The UK news outlet is an international source for news. It transmits its stories in various languages, and is respected worldwide for its reporting.
3. Al Jazeera English – @AJEnglish Twitter Bio: Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel, headquartered in Doha, Qatar. Follow @AJELive for breaking news alerts. Followers: 2.01M Need for Feed: The same news story comes out differently based on who is telling it and what country they are telling it from. There are many great non-American news sources. Unfortunately, they are not typically translated into English. Al Jazeera, a news source based out of Qatar, offers its news in many different languages, one of them being English. At the very least, following Al Jazeera English will yield a different perspective on the news.
Photo: Flight escorted by F16 jets back to Toronto for emergency landing due to ‘unruly passenger’ – @CBCTorontohttp://t.co/eJnSXBkTmn
4. Breaking News- @BreakingNews Twitter Bio: Download our new iOS and Android apps to control the breaking news you want to see. Followers: 6.77M Need for Feed: Breaking news is a strictly mobile device news source. It picks the biggest breaking stories and buzzes them out in little tweets.
Check out the viral video that has North Korea’s dictator losing his shit http://t.co/P5BBmSzbyW
5. The Young Turks – @TheYoungTurks Twitter Bio: Hosted by @CenkUygur &@AnaKasparian. Watch TYT Live weeknights 6E/8P onlinehttp://bit.ly/TYTlive & tweet #tytlive. Be a TYT member – http://tytnetwork.com Followers: 89.7K Need for Feed: The outbreak of the Internet has given independent creators new opportunities previously reserved only to large organizations, and news reporting is one of them. The Young Turks can be found reporting news on various Internet platforms, including Sirius Satellite Radio.
Study: Military men under 40 are are three times more likely to suffer erectile dysfunction http://t.co/3sXtquvjk9
6. Salon.com – @Salon Twitter Bio: Providing fearless political journalism and cultural analysis since the dawn of the digital era. We’re also at http://www.facebook.com/salon Followers: 392K Need for Feed: Salon is great not just for news reporting, but also culture.
7. BuzzFeed News – @BuzzFeedNews Twitter Bio: A news wire for the social web. Reporting by @michaelhayes and@weeddude and others. Followers: 119K Need for Feed: Like an ever growing child that won’t stop eating, BuzzFeed keeps feeding itself so much buzz that it keeps getting bigger. While BuzzFeed is mainly known for pop culture and comedy reporting, it also does a respectable job in reporting the news.
8. The Onion – @TheOnion Twitter Bio: America’s Finest News Source. Subscribe on YouTube:http://bitly.com/xzrBUA Followers: 6.03M Need for Feed: It’s fake news. It’s meant to make you laugh, or reflect on the irony of certain situations. But mainly to make you laugh.
9. The Daily Show – @TheDailyShow Twitter Bio: Jon Stewart and The Best F#@king News Team. Mon-Thurs at 11/10c on @ComedyCentral. Full episodes, videos, guest information. #DailyShow Followers: 2.6M Need for Feed: A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Sometimes listening to the news can be depressing, and humor can be that spoonful of sugar to help digest the sadness of what we see reported on the screen.
Yesterday after winning his first British Open, Rory McIlroy became the third-youngest golfer to win 3 of the 4 major tourneys! #newgolfking
10. Teen Kids News – @teenkidsnews Twitter Bio: Emmy Winning TV News show for Kids by Kids Followers: 1008 Need for Feed: The Internet exposes youth to almost everything. While it’s important for kids to know what’s going on in the world, adult news can be too graphic or too complicated. Teen Kids News offers an abridged version of the news, as told by kids.
There you have it—a drop from an ocean (or at least a sizable lake) of good Twitter feeds for the news. How about you, Paste readers … what are some other good Twitter feeds for people who love to read the news?
Madina Papadopoulos is a New York-based freelance writer, author and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow her on Twitter.
