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I don't have any sensible way of learning about current affairs. I don't consume broadcast or print news. Most news stories reach me through social media, blogs, word of mouth or personal research, and I will independently follow up on the ones I think are worthy of interest. This is nowhere near optimal. It means I will probably find out about innovations in robotic bees before I find out about natural disasters or significant events in world politics.
Regular news outlets seem to be messy, noisy attention traps, rather than the austere factual repositories I wish them to be. Quite importantly, there seems to be a lot of stuff in the news that isn't actually news. I'm pretty sure smart people with different values will converge on what a lot of this stuff is.
Has this problem been solved already? I'm willing to put in time/effort/money for minimalist, noise-free, sensibly-prioritised news digest that I care about.
ETA: Although I haven't replied to all these responses individually, they seem very useful and I will be following them up. Thanks!
Meh. Sufficiently big natural disasters or political events find a way onto my Facebook feed anyway.
Once in a while when I'm bored I check out the Android app of my country's wire service (I think the American equivalent would be the Associated Press) and/or the box in the top right of the English Wikipedia's home page. But it's a rare week that I spend more than half an hour seeking out news deliberately.