Idea: A better news app
My biggest problems with modern media are:
- filter bubbles
- lots of outlets rewriting the same story
- Unimportant news that gets broadcast extensively (often thanks to algorithms and ad revenue)
- Siloing within a news article (i.e. one article does not suggest other coverage from other outlets)
Notice "bias" is not on my list. Bias is only a problem IMO because of filter bubbles and siloing.
Update 8/29/2024: The base of the app should be RSS. So the feeds discussed below would be added, but they would simply be added via RSS. The app would provide an easier setup process and less technical interface for working with RSS. It would likely also provide it's own backend service for generating special RSS feeds. This would allow custom pages for things like the U.S. Bills, as I am dissatisfied with existing options
What I want
I want single app where I plug-in my area (city/state) and the following feeds are automatically setup for me:
- Ex: Main Feed (sub-feeds/categories)
- U.S. Bills (Signed, Passed Both Houses, Passed Senate, Passed House, Introduced Senate, Introduced House)
- I might prefer something like 'Open for Comment' and 'Signed' and 'Dead On Arrival' This way, my feeds are about what I can do as a voter, BUT it also then requires some curation.
- State Bills (Signed, Passed Both Houses ... same as federal bills)
- City Ordinances / Resolutions (Approved, rejected, proposed)
- My city council releases an agenda on Fridays then votes 3 days later on the resolutions.
- County Ordinances / Resolutions (very similar to city council)
- Local Government Messaging (Meetings, Announcements, Propaganda)
- This will include all local governments, like City Council, Park District, Health Board, the different County Board Committee Meetings, and more.
- Can filter by both (Meetings, Announcements, Propaganda) AND by government entity (City Council, Park District, etc)
- Local News (Politics, Non-profits, Community, Business, Elections, Courts, Police, Crime, mb others)
- Can be filtered by news organization. Locally, we have 2 mainstream outlets, 2 or 3 regional outlets covering our area, at least one prominent local radio/podcast/news station, and then a few smaller or more independent outlets. It might be worth separating mainstream local news from independent local news, but idk.
- State News (same as Local)
- Federal News (essentially what the 'AllSides' rss feed provides, or mirror the local news categories, idk)
This is the gist of it. That's a lot of stuff I listed.
If I were going to build something like this, I would probably start with:
- the bills at the state and federal level
- Feed of all local news outlets, sortable by tag or group
- Feed for city council ordinances
The important thing about an early prototype is making something that is useful IN MY COMMUNITY, but is not a huge investment for me. Cataloguing all local government messaging would be a nightmare (they are on multiple platforms and not required to publish messaging to a central publicly-accessible feed).
So it becomes a question of "what's the most helpful idea" balanced with "and which ones of those can I do with minimal time and work investment?"
And for me, personally, it's probably those three I named above.
And it might be nice to have an 'algorithm' feed that runs locally that I can opt into if I choose.
I would also like to get into describing exactly what I want from each feed. Like what details should show for the bills (ideally, my representatives should be pulled up for me!)