The weeks remaining until the Nov. 5 general election are likely to be a stemwinder. If not careful, we could fall under the spell of the 24/7 news machine whose stories circulate frequently in our news galaxy and are often out of touch with our communities. It could be easy to get caught up in the excitement without substantially contributing to the Democratic election effort.

Meta’s new social media platform Threads asserts they do not promote political news on their platform. Specifically, they say, “we won’t proactively recommend content about politics on recommendation surfaces across Instagram and Threads.” To get your political content on Threads, follow accounts with the kind of information you seek. This seems like a net positive. We should all be pro-actively curating the feeds of our social media accounts.

What should a progressive do regarding news?

Find a small group of close friends with whom you can discuss news and what it means. I have multiple groups like this and they provide consistency and sanity in a turbulent news environment which includes generous doses of disinformation and misinformation. Some of us in the groups have weathered many political campaigns together and that base of experience is useful in interpreting events in this year’s campaign. We aren’t always right about things yet we are less often wrong. We can usually tell what story is full of malarkey and what isn’t.

Connect directly with campaigns if you can: the further down the hierarchy the better. Essential to having a meaningful presence in the Iowa State Capitol is electing more Democratic Senators and Representatives. They have a different task from Kamala Harris and U.S. House candidates in getting their names known in a district. They also need to know a larger percent of the electorate personally. Their on the ground perspective from voters provides information in a way like no other. What is heard at the doors while knocking for a state house candidate is news gold in the currency of a campaign.

There is a role for breaking news from traditional news outlets. I subscribe to the Washington Post, but pick your major news outlet. When a major story breaks, like the prisoner exchange with Russia last week, they can quickly deploy a large team of journalists to gather information on the story. When I hear something is going on, I go to the website and see if they are reporting anything. Breaking news is never perfect, far from it. It is a way to bring relevant stuff on our radar for monitoring.

The distinction between social media and email in news gathering is significant. Email can have a much broader reach than social media. For outbound messaging it is clear. I recently attended my high school class reunion. The planning committee wanted to distribute and make available photos taken at the event on a web page. We posted the link on our Facebook group with 91 members and sent it via email to 100 email addresses. By far, the emailed link got more views, by a factor of 1.7:1. For inbound messaging there is even a stronger case for email over social media.

I wrote previously, “Some journalists found a way to make a living outside the world of newspapers. It is increasingly clear that with the rise of potentially profitable podcasts, substacks, YouTube channels, and the like, there is more money to be made in these new entities than in writing for a newspaper. There are important essays to read in this fragmented news media, yet our formal news environment is the worse for these one-off entrepreneurial enterprises.” I subscribe to specific journalist substacks with the benefit of receiving news analysis that goes beyond what one might find in a social media feed. By following a specific author, I gain insight into their world view by seeing how they report on different topics.

So what am I saying?

Get news from actual humans. Activate your network of friends to evaluate the news environment: have a place to go to discuss the news. Join a state house campaign and talk to voters in that context to know what is news at the grassroots level. Curate your social media feeds to produce the kind of news that is of value to you. Learn which journalists are doing straight up reporting and analysis and which are ideologues. Follow the former. Subscribe to at least one major news outlet plus a local one if it’s any good. Read some of those hundreds of daily emails in your inbox for the news content. Know which ones are valuable and unsubscribe from the laggards. Be open minded yet skeptical. Use your personal network to root out disinformation and misinformation.

May sound like a lot to do, yet I predict you will be more effective and happier if you can manage these things. Obviously, keep reading Blog for Iowa.