40+ sources of news and information for the US in 2025

Staying informed is critical, and a bit challenging these days. A revisionist and censorious US administration, a media and political landscape significantly captured by billionaires, misinformation and disinformation, and a flood of low quality computer generated text ... the deck is stacked against us.

But with a little effort, you can reliably find quality news and information. You're going to need to – we all are, if we're to hold on to our sanity and reclaim civil society from oligarchs, and build a better future.

Click here to skip right to the list of news and media outlets.

And, well, while I never did finish my degree in philosophy or journalism, I am still a news junkie and media critic. I'd like to think I've got something to offer, so:

In this post, I share a few key tips that guide where I go for information and how I metabolize it, as well as more than 40 outlets I find myself using frequently. I include some outlets that are mainstream, legacy, or for-profit, but prioritize those that are nonprofit, co-operative, and independent.

Read with your eyes wide open

My perspective

This isn't a list from nowhere. It's my list, and I'm a white queer, trans, disabled middle class person who works in open source tech and nonprofits, is deeply invested in civics and the commons, and is based in Northern California.

My guiding lights are human rights, worker power, climate, and the environment. I believe our freedoms emerge from collective care and solidarity, not in spite of them. I want us to build peaceful, pluralistic, and prosperous societies that can stand the test of time and reach for the stars. I'm politically pragmatic so I vote like a social democrat – think Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

Tips for information gatherers

Intentionally seeking news from a known set of sources is like a superpower in this era. You can see the world more clearly, which ... isn't pleasant at first. But better the devil you know. The daemon you can name and tame. A few tips:

First, I can't stress enough that content recommendation algorithms on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, X, and the rest cannot be trusted.

Second, news and media literacy is outside the scope of this post. I'm not going to talk about how to separate the wheat from the chafe, or why it's so important to understand who owns a media outlet, where they're located, and how they make money.

But I will share a few things that I keep in mind when I'm reading something:

• Who ultimately owns and controls the outlet?
• How do they make their money, and how might that influence reporting?
• Who wrote this, what is their background, and what do I know about what they've written before?
• Is this article opinion, editorial, news, analysis, or investigative journalism? Is it honest about that?
• What's the political leaning of the publication? (Try checking here!)

Third, spend some time up front setting things up so it's easy to get information from the source, rather than stumbling across it. 30 minutes to an hour will go a long way! It's about making it easy on you long term.

Subscribe to key outlets and topics in an app like Flipboard, or a service like Feedly, or using RSS feeds and your favorite client. (If you don't know RSS ... yes you do! RSS feeds are the distribution mechanism that underlie podcasting! Open protocols and formats FTW.)

Not the news

One last detour before I get into my list of media outlets. I want to share four things that AREN'T the news, but are great allies.

1. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is ace for staying well informed about the major issues of our time. And it's hilarious. Each episode goes deep on a topic, and the depth of their research shows. It is the main reason we subscribe to HBO Max, and you can find a lot of it on YouTube. As someone on Bluesky recently observed, John Oliver covered Project 2025 better, and earlier, than most others.
2. Wikipedia remains a well edited beacon of hope and communal effort to maintain accurate information about important things.
3. Internet Archive is a phenomenal resource for archiving websites and digging through their historical record.
4. Your local library is there for you in so many ways!!!

Worried about paywalls? Check out your local libraries, many – like Sonoma County Library – have newspaper subscriptions that you can use ✨ for free. ✨

If I may: please, take advantage of your tax dollars and see what else your local library has available online and in-person. Computers, printers, seed libraries, tools, recording studios, 3D printers, and the best, most helpful kind of people: librarians. And librarians are skilled at finding and vetting information.

News

First, let me mention the two mainstream nonprofit outlets that I find essential – because they prioritize news and fact reporting, right down the middle:

• Associated Press
• NPR

I'm going to divide the rest of this into:

• nonprofit and independent outlets,
• outlets relevant from city to state level for Petaluma, California,
• international outlets,
• and, lastly, for-profit outlets.

Nonprofit and independent outlets

Investigative reporting:

• Bellingcat – cutting edge investigative reporting
• Mother Jones – investigative journalism
• ProPublica – public interest investigative journalism

States:

• States Newsroom – state-level news across the US
• Cal Matters – California
• Texas Observer – Texas

Identity:

• The Advocate – led by queer and trans people
• Assigned Media – led by trans people
• Capital B News – Black voices
• DAME Magazine – led by women
• Prism – led by journalists of color
• 19th News – led by women

Science, climate, environment, and technology:

• 404 Media – technology
• Grist – climate
• The Markup – technology
• The Narwhal – climate, environment, Canada
• Sequencer Magazine – science
• The Xylom – science

Other:

• The American Prospect – public policy from a progressive perspective
• The Appeal – criminal legal system
• The Conversation – explanatory journalism across the globe from academics working with journalists
• Lawfare – national security, law, and policy
• Places Journal – architecture, landscape, urbanism
• Talking Points Memo – US politics

Local news

• Petaluma Argus-Courier and The Press Democrat
• KRCB Northern California Public Media and KQED (nonprofit)
• North Bay Bohemian
• Indybay (nonprofit)
• The Bay Area Reporter
• The Oaklandside (nonprofit)
• San Francisco Chronicle
• San Jose Spotlight (nonprofit)
• Cal Matters (nonprofit)

International news

• ABC (Australia)
• Al Jazeera (Qatar)
• BBC (UK)
• The Conversation (US)
• Crikey (Australia)
• DW (Germany)
• The Guardian (UK)
• Haaretz (Israel)
• The Tyee (Canada)

For-profit news

For-profit news isn't inherently bad, it's just that the profit motive introduces vulnerabilities that are particularly salient in this day and age. I list them because I think they have something to offer.

I've chosen to group these by their owners:

• Ars Technica, Teen Vogue, Them, The New Yorker, WIRED – all owned by Condé Nast, privately owned by the Newhouse families via Advance Publications
• Foreign Policy, Slate – privately owned by a conglomerate called Graham Holdings Company
• Rolling Stone – privately owned by Penske Media Corporation, a mass media and publishing company
• Scientific American – privately owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a publishing company based in Germany
• STAT – privately owned by Boston Globe Media

Here are some outlets that should be read only with great skepticism, as they have carried water for bigotry and sane washed rising authoritarians. However, there are bright spots among the work and I find it illuminating to see what propaganda campaigns the ruling class – noting most of these are owned by billionaires – are currently engaged in.

• The Atlantic – privately owned by Emerson Collective run by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs
• AXIOS – privately owned by Cox Enterprises, a conglomerate
• Bloomberg News – privately owned by Bloomberg L.P. and billionaire Michael Bloomberg
• Business Insider, Politico – privately owned by Axel Springer SE, a multinational mass media company based in Germany
• LA Times – privately owned by Nant Capital and billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong
• New York Times – publicly traded for-profit
• Washington Post – privately owned by Nash Holdings and billionaire Jeff Bezos of Amazon infamy