Let me be the contrarian here. If you limit yourself to a few content sources, you won't be able to make the leaps that come out of having access to information outside those sources and will eventually fall prey to group-think.
Might work for you for a bit but if you want to change the world, you have to be aware of it.
In my experience, a good book about the past is worth a thousand news articles. (And then some.)
History repeats itself more often than we think.
Prime example:
One of the first hacks for the TX-0 was Peter Samson's music compiler, even though the TX-0 was not designed to have such capabilities and to most people the thought was ridiculous.
The first hack for the Altair was Steve Dompier's rendition of "Fool on the hill" using the Altairs radio interference. The Altair wasn't designed for this purpose either.
For some reason, two different people from different decades looking at similar (But very different) machines decided to do the same thing with them, without any prompting.
There are universal concepts that humans try to implement, improve, and expand upon. Keeping these in mind while trying to do cool stuff will go further than most news pieces. (Even the ones about other people doing cool stuff.)
I agree. Good creative output requires at least some degree of good creative input (especially, IMHO, in more artistic endeavors like creative writing). You need other people's ideas to help expand your own, even as you try to escape from their boxes. Yet, if you spend all your time doing that, you'll never reap the benefits.
One of the OP's points is that most "news" sources are not actually informative, but rather just another form of entertainment. That is, they tell you things that your brain latches on to and wants to hear about, not things that you actually need to hear about. How do you respond to that?
I totally agree. I love seeing how a story varies as reported in the ny post, ny times, and la times for example. It definitely gets me thinking about what tthe issues behind the text are, and forming ideas in response.
Might work for you for a bit but if you want to change the world, you have to be aware of it.