I'm okay with Kinja. The reason I hate Jezebel is that even with the star system it had the largest hive mind of any Gawker site. I can read an article on any site, but if I want comments that would critique it Jezebel is the absolute worst for comment sections. I don't need a plus one. I need to learn about nuanced differences. Kinja has only confirmed that debate does not exist there in spite of quality pieces.
I don't really know what sites I go to regularly for news, but I do know which ones I don't go to: Buzzfeed, Salon, Slate, Jezebel, Gawker, Fox News, MSNBC, HuffPo, Washington Post, and Buzzfeed God I hate Buzzfeed.
I go to Politico, Drudge Report, the New York Times, BBC, and liveleak, and for hockey news I go to TSN.
The Economist: The Upper Class White Dude's Tool to Pretending to Know About Politics in Zaire Because He Read 150 Words. I don't mind the magazine; in fact, I quite like it. The problem with saying "the Economist is all you need" is that maybe 10-30% of the magazine's content is the sort of thing that is relevant to an American reader. Does the average person looking for news really want or need to know about the policies of the Latvian central bank? About infighting between members of British Parliament because the Duke of Ebenshire's family doesn't get along with the Minister from Stuffington? The Atlantic is on average likely to have more content that is related to issues American readers actually care about, and is also better written stylistically/more ideologically diverse. If you can, read both, throw in the New Yorker every once in a while. Read Marginal Revolution and read as many outgoing links as you can. Cowen is one of the best in the nation in terms of passing along good stuff. If you want breaking news, Al Jazeera and BBC are the gold standard. The New York Times is still our best paper by an enormous margin, even if you don't care for its politics. If you want finance, read the FT and then the WSJ (skip its editorial page), then log onto your computer and find Dealbook and Felix Salmons. They're accessible enough for the lay reader, unlike some more tightly focused sites like Zero Hedge. I used to read Andrew Sullivan pretty regularly when I had the time (dude pumps out a lot of content), but I imagine your mileage will vary heavily depending on ideological bent there. I spend more time on the various Gawker-family websites than I have any business doing. ESPN is kind of an unfortunate necessity, since most of the articles are junk. They're basketball coverage is not bad. Yahoo's is surprisingly good, too. Grantland is also a mix between fantastic articles and pseudo-intellectual masturbation.
Al Jazeera is good, but its just the stuff where they have an on-air party for a guy who murdered a 4 year old Israeli girl I can't get on board with.
BBC News, Fark and reddit for goofy or unusual shit and occaisionally Al-Jazeera. The Economist is great...sometimes. I find that I'll look at one article every five times I visit the site, but the articles are usually interesting enough to make it worth it. Also, Digg because I roll like it's 2004 and they have a stimulating, but random collection of shit that always manages to grab my attention once or twice.
I get a lot from Fark, which tells you how important the news really is to me. Who am I kidding I don’t even read half the articles on Fark unless the fake headline is clever enough. Every once and a while I will check out Aljazeera and the local papers. Dont forget about The Onion.