Blog #1 - My Top 5 Personal Sources of Information

 I will admit, I did not pay much attention to the news when I was growing up, so I do not have a go-to news platform like CNN or Fox. I was hesitant to listen to these platforms because I felt I would be drawn to one side of the political spectrum and get caught in an echo chamber. 

This skepticism remained, but I slowly became more accepting of news sources when I went through high school and became a student at High Point University. Over time, I grew to like these 5 sources and would recommend you to give them a try!

1) SmartNews

SmartNews is a news app that is only available on Android and iOS phones, so there is no way to view it on computers. The app doesn't publish its own news, but it finds articles from publishers such as Fox News, CNN, and Reuters to present to the user. 

It also has different types of news the user can view, such as sports news, world news, political news, etc. The time I first saw this app, sometime around 2018, I assumed it was nothing special and slowly forgot about it. Since then, SmartNews has changed, a lot. 

The first major update I noticed was the 2020 election update, which showed the user which countt in each state voted for Trump or Biden, as well as which seats in the House of Representatives or Senate were taken by Democrats or Republicans at this time. 

SmartNews also introduced the "News From All Sides" slider, which allows users to see news sources from both political parties. This was what got me to go back to SmartNews because I recall using this app to be informed about the 2020 election and learn the results. 

The "News From All Sides" slider reminded me of a website that gave me an insight into political biases, called allsides.com Thanks to this update, I can distinguish the left-leaning, neutral, and right-leaning publishers in my news!

As if this was not enough to get me back into SmartNews, they also added a COVID-19 tracker to track cases across the US and the world, which I regularly checked up on when I was attending high school.

Other features include a local map displaying upcoming weather, extreme weather, statements from the U.S. National Weather Service, and a section dedicated to talking about TV shows and movies. SmartNews has been rated the "Best for Local News" by BestApp.com and contains lots of ways to view news you would be interested in.

2) Pubity Group

Even though SmartNews has it all, it is also a good idea to get your news from several sources. If you have never heard of Pubity Group before, I don't blame you. It started with one person posting soccer scores on an Instagram account, but soon turned into a social media giant with accounts on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter, to name a few! 

I first heard of Pubity when they were reporting the events of the Titan, a submersible that sank in June 2023. Around the same time a boat with 750 migrants sank off the coast of Greece. If Pubity had not reported this, I may have never known about this tragedy since the Titan overshadowed it. 

They also reported Oceangate shutting down their website and social media accounts around a month after the submersible had sunk. I only pay attention to their main page, but they also discuss news about AI, gaming, and other news. They also post memes and pets, so they are not serious all the time.

3) Citizen

Citizen is another app I use that reports on 911 calls in your local area as well as reports on shootings, amber alerts, and other events. For local news, the app detects all alerts in a 1.5-mile radius away from the user and they could range from police activity to a shooting and alerts from the National Weather Service, just like SmartNews. 

Thankfully, there has not alerted me to an emergency on campus, but it has alerted me to a few shootings, one of which is the University of Virginia shooting last year. My brother went to a different college in Virginia, but this alerted me to the danger he may be in. He turned out ok, but Virginia Tech's football game against UVA got canceled as a result. 

Citizen also alerted me to the UNC Chapel Hill shooting around the end of August, which is where some of my former classmates went to. 

It also informed me about the Chinese spy balloon flying above the US at the start of this year thanks to Citizen users posting recordings of the balloon over their homes. While similar situations have not occurred since this, it is good to know that Citizen will alert its users.

4) YouTube

The three sources of news I listed above cover global and local news, but what about news specifically related to gaming? Sure, SmartNews and Pubity Group cover some news about gaming, but what about the opinions of gamers and news about game companies? 

For me, this is where YouTube comes in, more specifically YouTube channels such as YongYea and SomeOrdinaryGamers. YongYea almost exclusively covers news about games and game companies such as Volition Studios shutting down, Ubisoft allegedly deleting accounts, and Overwatch 2 canceling its PVE mode. 

SomeOrdinaryGamers covers tech and social media drama while occasionally covering games. While he does not regularly discuss games, he covers security exploits such as a security exploit that can get anybody's Xbox account banned. As an Xbox gamer, this video was invaluable to me and I was extra careful when playing my games.

5) LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social media platform focused on networking, following news from companies across the world, and searching for jobs. Not only has LinkedIn helped me network with professionals in the gaming industry and my peers, but it introduced me to some resources to help with my future job hunt, which is Hitmarker and Games Jobs Direct. 

It also shows what developers have been working on, including rain effects, realistic water, and projects like "Lost Fragment".