Lesson 8 min 15 XP
Building Your News Diet
Curating reliable, diverse sources — a practical framework.
One question, then back to the lesson
Ask about this lesson
Building Your News Diet
Read 1 of 3
For the complete documentation index, see llms.txt.Skip to main content
Building Your News Diet
Read 1 of 3
Curating reliable, diverse sources — a practical framework.
Your news diet is the set of sources you regularly consume. Like a food diet, it can be healthy or unhealthy — and most people's news diets are the informational equivalent of junk food.
A healthy news diet has three properties:
Build your diet in layers:
Debate competition rewards a specific kind of sustained intellectual work: the ability to research deeply, articulate clearly under time pressure, and respond strategically to opposing arguments. The concept covered here is one piece of that broader skill set.
Three habits separate competitive debaters who improve consistently from those who plateau:
Debate evidence is only as strong as its sources. Build the habit of evaluating sources before reading them:
The NSDA's prohibition on AI-generated evidence (March 2023 Competition Rules Board) makes source quality and verifiability more important than ever — you must be able to produce the original source if challenged.
The best debaters are the ones who can be coached. Build the discipline of accepting criticism, asking targeted questions about your weakest rounds, and implementing specific improvements before the next tournament. For partner formats (PF, Worlds), develop explicit communication norms with your partner about division of labor, in-round signaling, and post-round debrief.