‘Links I Liked’ that I Like

It has been a while since I’ve compiled a week’s development blog reading into a “Saturday Morning Reading“, so I’d like to share a few alternative links reviews.

Blogs

I follow these blogs, and around a hundred others, using an RSS Reader called Feedly. I find that it keeps things well-organised, presents articles nicely and integrates well with other services I use, such as Evernote, Instapaper and Twitter.

• Duncan Green’s From Poverty to Power blog is probably the most successful development blog in the UK and so it’s not surprising that “Links I Liked” is entertaining and informative each Monday, with a combination of links, charts, cartoons and videos.
• Tobias Denskus’s Aidnography Links and Contents I Liked is much more thorough – going far beyond listing links to pull out key quotes and critique articles on development news, anthropology, academia and media.
• Ranil Dissanayake’s links round up is fairly new on the scene but is already one of my favourites featuring highlights from the economics blogosphere, with detours to lament (or, today, celebrate) the Sri Lankan cricket team.
• [Added 30/08/16] Rachel Strohm has a regular “Links I liked” section that is in equal parts informative and entertaining, with musical interludes. (Thanks to Tobias Denskus for pointing out the lack of female bloggers on the list.)
• Hosted on Chris Blattman’s popular blog, but not authored by him, IPA’s Weekly Links, showcases the the latest in development economics.
• DevPolicy’s fortnightly links are new to me but come highly recommended by the team behind WhyDev.

Email Newsletters

I’m also signed up to a few email newsletters. It’s worth noting that I have all of these filtered to skip my inbox and go straight into a designated folder so I’m not distracted by them. I used to be subscribed to several more but have made an effort to narrow this down so that I only see what I really value. Unroll Me is a great service to help with this.

Daily

• “The Development and Aid World News Service (DAWNS) is a news curation service for global news junkies.” It arrives in your inbox each morning with a high quality selection of the most important stories from the developing world. Highly recommended.
• “IRIN delivers unique, authoritative and independent reporting from the frontlines of crises to inspire and produce a more effective humanitarian response.” You can customise which humanitarian news you receive according to your interest and the articles are high quality journalism.
• I also receive the Financial Times Briefings on World News, Global Business and the Energy Sector. Even if you don’t agree with the FT on everything, it’s important to realise that this is what the establishment in Britain is reading and so it sets the agenda. The same applies to The Economist.

Weekly

• WhyDev’s Last Week Today comes out each Friday with an irreverent take on global development news.
• The Economist’s Editor’s Picks only include one-line summaries of about five articles per week, but they’re normally interesting enough for me to click on at least a couple of them.
• Yellow Monday from the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) is new to me but recommended by John in the comments as “good for research and info (also jobs that tend to not show up in other places)”.
• [Non-development] I use Instapaper as a service to save articles I’ll read when I’ve got a bit more time. They also have a newsletter service, sharing their top five most read articles each week, which you can choose to receive from the user settings page.
• [Non-development] Eric Barker’s Barking Up the Wrong Tree is about personal development: how to find happiness, be productive and make a relationship last. It’s well-researched and full of practical recommendations.

I’m also signed up for monthly newsletters with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and the Center for Global Development (CGD) to make sure I’m up to date with their activities and research.

Let me know if I’m missing out on anything. I’ll get back to writing my own link review with Saturday Morning Reading soon!