The Carrot blog
A little more context.
Notes on useful briefs, better questions, and keeping the sources close.
What is a personalised news brief?
How a finite briefing differs from a feed, and how streams, a roundup and individual stories can organise interests.
How to write a useful interest stream
Give your personal news brief a subject, a boundary and a useful angle. Examples for research, work and interests, without complicated prompting.
How to check an AI news summary
A practical source-checking routine: identify the claim, open the original, compare dates and numbers, and notice what the summary leaves uncertain.
Why does the news feel so relentlessly negative?
Partly because hard things happen, partly because negative headlines tend to win clicks, and partly because feeds rarely end. What the evidence shows, and how to keep up without losing track of what has changed.
What can personalised news miss?
Mainly the stories you didn’t know to ask for. What the research says about filter bubbles, what readers worry about, and three simple ways to keep a wider view.
Should you use an AI chatbot or Carrot to keep up with the news?
A fair comparison: what chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini can already do for news, when they are the better choice, and the narrower job Carrot is being built for.
How to follow a news story without reading the same thing twice
A three-line note and four quick questions to help you tell whether new coverage moves a story on, with an illustrative example.