A couple of weeks ago Rurik, one of our most frequent longtime commenters, suggested that we add a “Breaking News” section, providing newslinks to external articles along the general lines of the influential Drudge Report:

I’d like to take this opportunity to make a suggestion.

I used to visit Drudge from time to time, just to get the latest news. If there was a plane crash or coup somewhere in the world, Drudge would usually be one of the first, if not first to have a link, if not a headline.

But Drudge has become ‘woke’ of late, and so he’s as useless as the MSM.

Which leaves a dearth of news sites linking to news stories. Especially with an objective interest in what is news per se, rather than their eternally agenda-driven slant, as you well know.

So the suggestion I have, is for The Unz Review to start a ‘Breaking News’ section.

If Russia shoots down a Turkish jet, instead of going to CNN or the NYT to read how ‘Russia’s provocations against NATO and International Law have become untenable and a dangerous threat to world peace and stability’.

We can get a more measured and nuanced look at breaking news, with links to the stories from a vast and wide-array of international news organizations.

From there perhaps your website could allow for commenting on the breaking news, or not.

But since there is such a dearth of objective news sites, or those linking to them, I just wonder if such an addition to the (amazing and inimitable) Unz Review wouldn’t be resoundingly popular. Perhaps even one day competing with and eventually replacing Drudge as the go-to site for breaking news on the Internet.

Thank you for your consideration,

the humble commenter ~ Rurik

He soon added that our own commenters would be ideally suited to providing such a crowdsourced presentation of important stories ignored by the MSM:

contemplating this, I wondered- ok, that would require someone to peruse the international and domestic news for interesting and consequential ‘breaking news’.

And who better to do that, than the notoriously news-savvy Unz Review commenter-commentariat?

Such a space would certainly need to be moderated for chaff, (considering the trolls that inhabit your site), and commenting would slow it down, but perhaps at the start, give it a boost.

Already your willing staff participate ‘gratis’, posting breaking news on existing threads, occasionally admitting it to be off topic, but on a “Breaking News’ addition to your site, it would be appropriate for all topics to be covered, so long as they were of interest.

I even wonder if a kind of Drudge-style format wouldn’t work well. With several news stories displayed on the page, with the most recent or most news-worthy at the top.

Just ‘thinking out loud here…’

I’m sure you’re familiar with WRH.

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

And that site is enormously popular simply by posting breaking news, with some slight commentary from the site owner.

But that site is bogged down with enough ads to alienate many people, so there again, another opportunity to fill a vacuum.

It amazes me that there is such a dearth of objective news sites on the Internet. Especially as Drudge was so popular, (and lucrative and influential). But now he’s become woke, and it seems like there’s simply hardly anywhere to go for interesting and consequential news that isn’t part of the American Pravda cabal.

This seemed like a very good idea to consider, especially since I’d recently noticed the rise of other newslink-aggregation websites. Therefore, I have now gone ahead and built it, generally following the simple design of the Revolver website.

Since this is an alternative media website, with a very energetic and ideologically-diverse commentariat of thousands of regular readers, I’d hope that they would soon become source of the overwhelming majority of our newslinks. All frequent commenters—those currently provided access to the Opinion Response buttons—are now also allowed to suggest possible Newslinks, though I’m currently applying a restriction of 3 per 24 hours. To suggest a possible Newslink just click the Suggestion box at the top of the Newslink page and add it in the following very simple format:

• (Required) URL of Newslink on First Line


• (Required) Suggested Newslink Heading on Second Line


• (Optional) Description of Newslink on Later Lines

If your Newslink is approved, it will be added to the top of the page. Depending upon how things go, I may need to adjust some of there parameters over time.

Given the increasingly harsh Social Media crackdown on the distribution of unorthodox opinions, I think these sorts of aggregation pages may become more important in the future.

The Newslink section is now displayed in the top menu and also the Sidebar. I’d look forward to hearing your perspectives and suggestions.