Weekend Reads | Democratizing Critical Knowledge: How to Cultivate Good Sources of Information

This will be my last Weekend Reads column. It's been an incredible privilege to have the opportunity to bring my love of reading to this task over the past four years. I am deeply grateful to the staff of the Emerald for granting it to me, and to you for lending me your attention.

During the quarter-century that I worked in a large corporation, I learned that as people move up in the hierarchy, they get plugged into different — and often better — sources of information that help them understand what is happening and make better decisions. Along the same lines, I saw many people who wanted to rise in the organization curating their own information feeds to mimic what their superiors had. Together, this impressed upon me that in addition to the divide between material "haves" and "have nots," there is a similar divide between those who have good information and those who don't. I am constantly surprised by how many past and current events are documented in writing; the trick is to find where it's written down. Upon reflection, my adult life has been repeated lessons on how valuable it is to invest time in cultivating good sources of information.

For me, the Weekend Reads column has been an attempt to democratize access to information: finding things that help us understand our world better and make better decisions, and then making that information available to everyone. The best stuff is often hidden, often because someone realized that it's in their best interest: Either they don't want others to know what they are doing, or they can extract some sort of competitive advantage by limiting others' access. 

I want to use this last Weekend Reads column to provide some guidelines and tips for how you can "roll your own" collection of information feeds. This isn't a one-size-fits-all endeavor; we all have our own interests and need to customize our feeds. That said, there is plenty of overlap in relevant information sources across people, and there are a few categories that help us structure our own list.

First, there are research organizations and associations that either do their own primary research or report on others' work. Some of the best ones are:

• The American Medical Association, which has a series of journals and constantly churns out new reports across the field of health care.

• The RAND Corporation, a nonprofit that does public-interest research.

• The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: Congressionally established organizations whose members are the leading researchers and practitioners in their fields, and they are tasked by the federal government to investigate important policy questions and issue reports. This is the best of what the United States has to offer: our best minds applied to hard problems, advising the government.

• McKinsey, a large corporate consulting organization that also does its own research studies (often focused on economic issues).

• Pew Research, one of the leading polling organizations focused on public policy questions.

• The Federal Reserve Bank, which has its own economic researchers and funds academic research in economics and finance.

Second, government agencies generate a constant stream of studies and reports. Many now have web pages where they post reports, along with an email list you can join to be notified of new publications. Some of the most prolific — and interesting — agencies are the auditors, which report on their own level of government as well as occasionally looking at other levels when a conflict of interest prevents the relevant auditor's office from studying an issue. 

• Seattle City Auditor, King County Auditor, Washington State Auditor

• Public Health – Seattle & King County, Washington State Department of Health

• Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, which creates regular reports on economic conditions in the U.S., Washington State, and Puget Sound

• City of Seattle newsletters

Third, there are the courts. Low-level courts tend to hide their documents behind paywalls, but the state and federal Courts of Appeals and Supreme Courts publicly post their opinions. For the federal courts, the Free Law Project runs a project called RECAP that collects and makes available free download documents from federal cases — they are all public records, so once you extract one from behind the paywall, anyone can republish it.

• King County Superior Court case records

• Washington State Courts (Appeals and Supreme Court) case records

• U.S. Supreme Court case records

• Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit opinions (covering Washington State)

• PACER, the official record-access system for the federal court system (you can create your own account and access court records directly)

• RECAP, the unofficial republisher of federal court records

Finally, there are press outlets that regularly publish lists of interesting things to read. Two of my favorites are:

• 1440 Daily Digest

• Axios daily newsletters

Curating your own information feed is an ongoing process as your interests change, new information sources become available, and old, trusted sources become less reliable over time. You will also want to automate the process as much as possible so the information comes to you instead of forcing you to regularly revisit each website. Look for mailing lists and RSS feeds that will help you to reduce your "gathering" workload so you can focus your time on reading.

Writing this column has been a unique privilege and I am deeply grateful for it. The famed author Kurt Vonnegut once observed that reading is hard work, and if we writers are asking our readers to do that kind of work, we need to make it worth their time and effort. I hope you have found Weekend Reads to be worth your time and effort, and I wish you all great success in cultivating your own reading habit.