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• Crikey's favourite distractions

  • Harper’s Index Number crunching for humanity.
  • HowStuffWorks For those who wonder what makes things tick, everything — EVERYTHING — is explained here.
  • Slate V Slate’s video site, featuring great original videos and the best of the web
  • Snopes Urban myths debunked; the first place to go when you get chain email
  • Spiked Libertarian poster child. Anti-PC to a fault, if you want endorsement of your chain smokin’, binge eatin’ lifestyle, you’ve come to the right place.
  • The Daily Show with Jon Stewart A growing number of young Americans get their news via The Daily Show’s satire. It’s testament to Jon Stewart’s genius that this is not a bad thing.
  • The Onion The headlines are still the best part of America’s satirical newspaper. But the videos come a close second.
  • The Straight Dope Fighting ignorance on the web: all the answers to all your burning questions
  • Vanity Fair Blogopticon American blogs sorted by scurrilous vs. earnest, news vs. opinion.

• For wonks

  • Antony Green Auntie’s election expert, and Australia’s wonkiest wonk
  • Breakfast Politics Simple but functional aggregation of the best Australian political coverage in the media, plus a bit of analysis of their own.
  • Crooks and Liars Probably the best place for US political videos, served up with a good dose of humour.
  • FiveThirtyEight Nate Silver, the pin-up boy of statistics. We followed his meteoric rise to political analysis fame during the ‘08 US election with awe and schoolgirl crushes.
  • House Rules Christian Kerr’s Australian political commentary at The Australian
  • John Quiggin The elder statesman of Australian political blogging, well respected by both sides of the divide. Awesome beard.
  • Larvatus Prodeo Mark Bahnisch’s Australian politics blog, with prolific contributers and lots of gerat debate in the comments
  • Psephos Australian-based blog tracking election news from all over the world
  • Real Clear Politics No-nonsense aggregation of great US (and sometimes international) political analysis, with a slightly conservative bent
  • RedState US conservative blogging powerhouse — the right-wing version of the Daily Kos
  • Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire Bite-sized bits of US political news
  • Talking Points Memo Their “Day in 100 Seconds” videos are the easiest (and most fun) way to digest US politics, while their Muckraker section does gerat work investigating political corruption.
  • Tasmanian Politics What it says on the box: Tasmanian politics, and lots of it
  • The Tally Room Ben Raue’s page for political geekery, digging into numbers from Australia and overseas

• Hot shots of online media

  • Boing Boing The original group blog. Lots of good links and online diversions.
  • Daily Kos Leftie group blog, with more posts than you can poke a stick at. Lots of great content — too bad it’s still so frakkin’ ugly.
  • Drudge Report Love him or hate him, Matt Drudge has been a pioneer in online journalism and he sure knows how to get attention. The site burns our eyes, though.
  • Huffington Post Arianna Huffington’s empire of news aggregation and political blogging. The first place to go for breaking US political news.
  • MetaFilter The king of community weblogs, full of interesting links both serious and stupid, plus debate-heavy comments threads that are often just as good.
  • Salon The “smart tabloid”, they make watching online ads worthwhile.
  • Slate It’s hard for us not to link to EVERY Slate story — the articles are always inspired and the analysis always sharp and witty.

• Magazines

  • American Conservative A different side of American conservatism. They aren’t ALL rabid neocons
  • Diplomatic Courier US-based quarterly global affairs magazine with despatches from far-flung corners of the Earth.
  • Economist Serious Discussion™ on news and world politics
  • GOOD So. Pretty. The BEST data visualisations, and lots of non-preachy green stuff
  • Harper’s If Crikey editor Jonathan Green was stuck on a desert island with only one magazine, this would be it.
  • Monocle From Tyler Brule, the man who brought us Wallpaper, this jetsetters’ magazine talks a bit too much about planes and trains, but the international features are always interesting. And it’s beautiful.
  • Mother Jones So liberal it hurts, but packed full of good investigative and opinion pieces
  • National Review Online American conservative magazine, with an increasingly neo-conservative bent of late.
  • New York Magazine Admit it: we all secretly wished we lived in New York. Some of the sceney stuff goes over our heads, but it’s always sharp and original
  • Newsweek Politics and opinion with a dash of culture
  • The Monthly Australia’s answer to the New Yorker. What was the question again?
  • The New Yorker Perhaps love can last forever.
  • Vanity Fair Celebrity mingles with politics. Borderline Annie Leibovitz obsessive compulsive but the original glossy mag still shines.

• Media Watchers

  • Bad Science Doctor Ben Goldacre rants about journalists misrepresenting science in the media — and often with very good reason.
  • Media Bistro A peppy resource for journos. But also a great source of media news.
  • Media Watch An Australian media institution. We still watch every week to make sure we’re not on it.
  • mUmBRELLA Hot spot for insider information about the Australian media world. Created by Tim Burrowes, former ed of B&T magazine.
  • Roy Greenslade The doyen of media watching. Always sage.
  • The Australian’s Media section Still the best newspaper media section in the country.
  • The New York Times Public Editor In which Clark Hoyt, the readers’ representative, monitors the New York Time’s journalistic practices. A fascinating look at the machinations of the newspaper giant.

• Newspapers from around Australia

  • ABC
  • Brisbane Times
  • Canberra Times
  • Financial Review
  • Herald Sun
  • NT News
  • The Age
  • The Australian
  • The Cairns Post
  • The Courier-Mail
  • The Daily Telegraph
  • The Mercury (Hobart)
  • The Sun-Herald
  • The Sydney Morning Herald

• Newspapers from around the World

  • ABC News (USA)
  • Al Jazeera
  • All Africa
  • AP
  • Asahi Shimbun
  • BBC
  • Boston Globe
  • CBS News
  • China Daily
  • CNN
  • Der Spiegel
  • Globe and Mail
  • Haaretz
  • IHT
  • Jerusalem Post
  • Moscow Times
  • MSNBC
  • New York Times
  • NZ Herald
  • Reuters
  • Stuff (NZ)
  • The Guardian
  • The Hindu
  • The Independent
  • The Irish Times
  • The Star (SA)
  • The Straits Times
  • The Times (UK)
  • Times of India
  • Washington Post
  • Xinhua