for some time the most popular post on my blog – last updated 6 December 2022

TL;DR – start with CNN, 68k News, or CBC first…

Reasons:

• CNN really is no longer as bad as you perhaps though (and actually, even their full graphics site, when using an ad blocker, is very reasonably designed)
• http://68k.news is a text-only version of Google News. You can choose the ‘edition’ (country) for local headlines. Articles from multiple sources are grouped by topic.
• CBC you’ve probably not heard of before and is definitely worth a look

https://lite.cnn.com/en (Cable News Network, now headquartered in New York)

https://www.cbc.ca/lite/ (Canada’s public service broadcaster).

CNN pros/cons:

Advantages:

• plenty of stories (40)+
• more varied content than there used to be – considerably less focus on Donald Trump, for example. 
• very fast, clean presentation
• extremely rare to have HTML->text conversion issues (and if anything, this has got better). It’s a pity occasional subheadings aren’t bolded, but still.

Disadvantages:

• stories presented in a random order with no categorisation / topics
• index page doesn’t provide date or timestamp, individual stories do
• opinion items mixed with reporting (they’re hardly alone in doing this, though)
• often sometimes no author name(s) on full article
• no direct link back to full versions of each item
• the live audio stream on the Lite site is nearly always missing/broken – but you can get it, you’ll need to go to this page on the main site: https://edition.cnn.com/audio (last tested Nov 2022) where you can choose between the US, Spanish, International English streams .  You can also listen to CNN on the TuneIn app, though weirdly it’s geoblocked from the UK on the TuneIn website.

68k News pros/cons:

• the widest range of stories
• only service with ability to select by country
• they may not have the news source you want
• you may find it slightly annoying having to read repeated headlines or headlines from sources you don’t like, or having to choose which newspaper/website you want for every story
• non-article content and other clutter like newsletter signups may not be stripped out

CBC pros/cons:

• fast-loading
• a world news page
• high-quality: includes stories from Reuters and Associated Press
• nevertheless a bit limited, you may want more news
• uniquely, a button to allow to you load any individual images you wish to view
• links at bottom of page to equivalent page on full size
• sitemap
• an actual release notes page!

Is there a text-only or low graphics BBC News website?

No, not for years. Don’t waste your time searching.

There is one exception. The old BBC On This Day website – like vast swathes of BBC content, abandoned for years – does still exist in low graphics format. You need to choose your own date, but all the linked articles still work. So if you want to read stories between WW2 and 2005…

Could a (paid) news app with an ‘offline’ mode be what you really want?

It might be the time pages take to load is what’s most annoying you, or – to use western countries as an example – you’re often an in area with congested 3/4G masts, or where wifi is spotty.

Certain apps, such as the Financial Times (both the full subscription, and FT Edit which is a much cheaper daily curated set of interesting articles rather than rolling news) will automatically download a full set of stories each time you open the app, and you can then instantly view those regardless of connection status. (The FT gives you a subtle prompt that offline mode is ready). Because the articles are loaded within an app rather than a browser, it will also feel quicker. The disadvantage is it’s more likely articles will contain ads which you can’t block as on a website (though ads may disappear in airplane mode).

For what it’s worth, I’ve found read