I've been using Twitter for news, IMO it's not too hard to get things "right":
- start from a (small) curated list, like
https://twitter.com/i/lists/1014747092554866689 for national politics
- add in news publications you read
- add in reporters from those news publications (they usually link their account in their bio)
- add in accounts of people who appear in the stories
- continue for 2-3 years
At the moment I'm following 18k news-ish accounts spread across 4 lists. The main Twitter interface doesn't work for that many accounts, but Tweetdeck does. I open it up in the morning and get a 10-minute dose of "reality", leaving me with 5-6 interesting news stories to read later from opening the links in background tabs. Even with semi-curated lists there's a lot of fluff in the feeds, but since it scrolls by in less than 10 seconds I don't mind as much.
Is this the best setup? Probably not, Nassim Taleb has written some good articles arguing that nobody should read any news. But it's enough to cover most of the popular trends and satisfy that "in the loop" craving.