In the reality of the 24/7 news cycle, we’re inundated with a constant flow of news and information. Television, radio, billboards, internet, newspapers, books, magazines, and more all compete to bring you your news better. How do we define better news?

Faster news? Dramatic news? Accurate news? Popular news?

Just because newspapers are dead doesn’t mean news is dead, far from it. As technology improves communication channels, we crave more outlets for information. Wikis, blogs, message boards, Twitter- if you really think about it, technology’s primary accomplishment through time has been to connect people to spread information.

Yet as we adjust to the new digital world, there is a grind of mediums distributing the news. There is so much confusion following every revolution and the internet is no different. Activity of news dispersion is everywhere online; Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Tumblr, WordPress, Flickr, YouTube- it’s all information dispersion. And with any abundance, there is bound to be some bad in the offering.

We live in a world where millions of people get their “news” from Glenn Beck. We also have millions who get their “news” from Keith Olbermann. No wonder partisan tension is so severe. There are people who think Stephen Colbert is a staunch conservative. Millions of people read dummy-websites that are built by marketers pushing their product. Medical blogs with little to no fact are everywhere. Websites guarantee you’ll lose 25% of your body weight by ordering a pill from Taiwan. Anyone with access to the internet can spam ideologies or spread false propaganda.

So it’s important to find the appropriate filter for your news consumption.

To our generation, news is like just about everything else in our lives; portable, instant, and easy. FoxNews is the most watched cable news network because their base demographic is older. Older tends to mean more conservative. Older also tends to mean a preference for traditional news outlets. That’s fine, human mortality ensures Murdoch’s cash cow won’t last forever.

So if you’re like me, you get your news online. But, as aforementioned, not everything online is reputable (far from it). So what’s my filter?

If you’re on Twitter, you can follow @BreakingNews. They do a fantastic job of providing instant information to the world’s major news stories without being excessive. If you haven’t been bitten by the Twitter bug, you can simply follow their feed at BreakingNews.com. (Note: It is run by MSNBC)

If you don’t need your news instantly, a great new site I can recommend is Newser. It’s an intuitive interface that gives you the news in a tiled thumbnail format. You can dig deeper by hitting the picture, and then dig even deeper by clicking through to the original source for the whole story.

If you want to know what is currently news on the internet, hit up PopURLS.com. It also serves as a wonderful homepage.

If you like your gossip, there isn’t a better (or increasingly reputable) source than TMZ.com. They have ears and eyes everywhere.

Political news – Politico.com | Technology news- Techmeme.com | Media news – MediaGazer.com

Economics/Finance news- Economist.com | General news- NPR.org | Social Media- Mashable.com

There are obviously more fragmented subsections of these news divisions that cater more to diehard enthusiasts, but these serve as a good base set.

Everyone will find their appropriate combination of information, but it remains important to be aware of where our news is coming from and how we interpret it. I’ll close with two quotes that may strike a chord.

A really great teacher once told me, “Grow aware of your own assumptions.”

Another professor told a class that whenever we hear or read anything, always stop and wonder, “Who is saying it? Why would they be saying it? Might they have some sort of personal agenda? And are they possibly biased?”

If you bring that type of critical thinking into your news filter, it’ll be easier for you to discover the good information and avoid the bullshit.