Why I Read 800 Headlines a Day (and Why You Don’t Have To)

The calm way to keep up

Twice a day – usually over breakfast and again in the evening – I open my news dashboard and swipe through a few hundred headlines. Sundays and holidays are lighter. On heavy news days, it’s more. Each session takes 15–20 minutes. That’s it.

If that sounds intense, it isn’t. Think of it like glancing at a departures board in an airport: dozens of lines, one clear purpose. I’m not reading 800 articles; I’m scanning the shape of the world. Patterns. Outliers. Blind spots. When something matters, I bookmark it for later – during a break, in the evening, or when I’m curating links to share.

Most headlines are ambient noise: regional sports, café lists, “we also covered this” duplicates. Those vanish with a flick. The value is in the mosaic – seeing what’s being emphasized (and by whom) and catching the gems I’d never see inside an algorithmic feed.

Why headlines are often enough

Headlines and excerpts do three jobs remarkably well:

1. Pattern recognition. When five outlets run similar angles, you can safely move on unless you need depth.
2. Signal vs. filler. Local flavor and routine updates are easy wins for the skip button.
3. Triage for depth. If something’s consequential, novel, or contradicts the dominant narrative, it gets a star.

This simple triage stops me from falling into tabs-on-tabs-on-tabs. I get perspective without losing the day.

Perspective is a feature, not a luxury

Relying on a single curated outlet – even a great one – comes with predictable bias. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s how editorial cultures work. You’ll feel it quickly when you read, say, German outlets next to BBC and Al Jazeera – and then add an Israeli source like Ha’aretz during Middle East coverage. Same events, three lenses, three vocabularies, three priorities. You don’t need to debate who’s “right” to feel the benefit: your brain triangulates faster, your confidence improves, your certainty gets humbler.

I apply the same principle beyond geopolitics. Tech reporting lands differently in Wired vs. IEEE Spectrum, different perspectives, different focus. Photography coverage in PetaPixel surfaces a different slice of reality than mainstream business press. Hacker News threads have their own gravitational field – sometimes chaotic, often invaluable. The perspective portfolio is the point.

The stack: RSS still wins

At the core is a wonderfully boring technology: RSS (and its cousins Atom and JSON Feed). It’s decentralized, human-scale, and refreshingly predictable. No engagement-ranking. No outrage incentives. Just a chronological feed of what publishers actually publish.

Sometimes the feed includes the full article; often there’s a substantial excerpt and a header image; always there’s a direct path to the source. No middleman deciding what you “should” see.

Most news websites and blogs provide a RSS feed. WordPress has it built-in. Even this blog here provides a full RSS2 feed.

I built my own reader years ago during a quiet weekend – partially because I wanted to understand RSS XML deeply, partially because PHP makes parsing structured data pleasant. It’s been reliably collecting feeds ever since. Before that I used TinyTinyRSS (powerful, but not 100% ideal for my use cases). And yes, I’ve tried the glossy apps. They’re lovely – and bound to specific devices or ecosystems.

You don’t need any of that to start.

If you’re not coding your own, use these

If you mainly read on one device (say, an iPad), a well-known app is perfect. NetNewsWire and Reeder are elegant. If you want cross-device sync and web access, Feedly and Inoreader are popular and capable. Prefer self-hosted open source? TinyTinyRSS gets the job done, quirks and all.

The point isn’t to replicate my setup. The point is to reclaim your information flow with the least friction. Start simple; you can always evolve later.

Beyond newspapers: build a useful mix

My feed is international by design – titles from multiple continents – but it also includes niche sources I care about and learn from daily:

• Tech and engineering: Wired, IEEE Spectrum, Smashing Magazine.
• Photography and media craft: PetaPixel (plus personal blogs from photographers I admire).
• Community signal: Hacker News (yes, with filters and a healthy skepticism).
• Practical monitoring: status pages and project release feeds.

This blend is where the real compound interest lives. You’ll get front-page context and the special edges that sharpen your thinking – without burying yourself in social feeds.

(One practical note: some top-tier sources like AP News, Reuters, or Swissinfo don’t offer full RSS these days. Their editorial briefings via newsletter are still worth it. I keep those separate from my inbox chaos and treat them like scheduled digests.)

Why I don’t rely on newsletters and social feeds

Newsletters are fine in moderation but quickly turn your inbox into a graveyard of good intentions. Social feeds, meanwhile, are tuned for engagement, not clarity. That’s their job. RSS gives me a quieter room: chronological, consistent, and respectful of attention.

Also: paywalls are not the enemy. Even if a publication like the NYT limits article views, headlines via RSS still show you the editorial map. That map helps you decide whether a subscription would actually serve you – and if so, to whom.

The routine, in practice

Morning session, coffee in hand. I open my dashboard: roughly 350–450 fresh items. I scroll. Most of the time, the first pass is just feel for the day: what’s breaking, what’s being ignored, what’s being framed three different ways. I tag pieces for later (reading, sharing, archiving). If something is urgent or directly relevant to my current work, I open it immediately. Otherwise it goes to the “second brain” queue.

Evening session repeats the pattern. If there was a major event, this is when counter-narratives start to surface. On quiet days, I’ll spend a bit more time on long-form pieces I starred in the morning.

Fifteen to twenty minutes per session. Two touchpoints. No guilt if I skip. It’s a radar, not a to-do list.

What this practice gives me

• Clarity without anxiety. I’m not gambling my mood on whatever a timeline decides is urgent.
• Global awareness. The same story across countries makes bias visible and nuance easier.
• Serendipity on tap. The niche feeds feed me – unexpected ideas that spark products, posts, and consulting insights.
• Time back. Quick triage now, deep reads when it actually serves me.

It also keeps my creative and strategic work honest. If I’m going to advise clients or write, I want a view of the world that isn’t shaped by a single editorial culture or a viral thread. This routine makes that baseline affordable – in minutes, not hours.

Why build my own reader at all?

Because I could – and because I wanted to understand the substrate. Playing with RSS at the XML level, handling edge cases, normalizing weird feeds, designing the UI around my brain – that all matters to me. And yes, PHP is excellent at this kind of structured parsing with a minimum of ceremony.

But this is an optional flex. If an off-the-shelf reader gets you reading calmly and consistently, that’s a win. If you later feel the itch to customize, you’ll have learned enough to make that project fun rather than frustrating.

When I find the time to develop this RSS reader further and fully complete it, it'll be available open source as NewsNest.

Start small (you don’t need 800)

If you want to try this, don’t copy my volume. Start with five to ten sources you already trust. Add two from outside your usual geography. Add one niche feed for a craft you care about. Commit to a single 10–15 minute scan per day. That’s it.

After a week, notice what’s missing. Add selectively. After a month, prune ruthlessly. Your goal isn’t to build Noah’s Ark of sources; it’s to build a muscle: scan, sense, star, move on.

And yes, it’s okay if you never read everything you save. Your “later” folder is a library, not a promise.

I read 800 headlines a day so you don’t have to. Not to flex, not to drown in information, but to keep a clear radar and make better choices with less noise. RSS – in all its quiet, durable simplicity – makes that possible. Whether you use a beautiful app, a hosted platform, TinyTinyRSS, or your own little weekend project, the result is the same: you own your information diet.

Start small. Keep it light. Let perspective compound. And if a headline earns your time, give it your full attention – on your terms.