For many of us, the days of flipping through morning cable news while getting dressed or grabbing coffee are long gone. Luckily, there are plenty of digital tools — from e-newsletters to iPhone apps — that can help you start the day well informed.

theSkimm

This weekday e-newsletter is your morning “news briefing.” The team of journalists and editors at this free service reads, expertly analyzes, and condenses the first editions of major daily newspapers to deliver pithy news summaries and insightful commentary written as if by a smart, sassy co-worker (“What to say when you’re feeling the need for WebMD,” for example). It’s not only informative, but also funny and playful.

Need 2 Know

This free e-newsletter sends you all the news stories that you “need 2 know” from politics and business to sports and entertainment. The editorial team at Need 2 Know creates the daily news summary using multiple reputable sources, including NBC, Fox, CNN, Der Spiegel, and Al Jazeera. The resulting digest contains key quote callouts, video clips, Wikipedia excerpts, relevant maps, and tweets to help you get the full story. Plus, the nifty “What to Say When” section makes it fun to share the latest headlines in a snap.

NextDraft

This sleek app from Marissa Mayer’s revamped Yahoo offers twice-daily definitive news summaries on all the topics that are “fit to print — or post.” The app curates a range of reputable sources to deliver mini news stories, with everything from political scandals to the discovery of penguin fossils covered. NextDraft also features a variety of other useful features, like a calendar to track important dates, a searchable archive, and a countdown that lets you know when the next digest is coming.

The Yale Daily News

The nation’s oldest college daily newspaper, the Yale Daily News is financially and editorially independent and serves students at Yale and New Haven. It publishes Monday through Friday during the academic year, and produces a number of special issues each semester such as the Yale-Harvard game day issue and the Commencement issue. Its website includes a full archive of past issues.

What happens when local journalism dies in a community is a crucial question — and one that’s being answered in communities across America. Andrew Conte’s Death of the Daily News is a deep, probing, and ultimately hopeful look at what it means for people to make sense of their world without a local media source. His account of the life and death of a paper in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of the news. It’s a model for how to think about the problem, and a roadmap for how to solve it.

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