Confession #1: I don’t watch the local news or make routine visits to CNN.com.  I’ve learned that I can choose what information to take in and what to block out.  Instead of the media dictating what I know, I actively and efficiently seek out information I’m interested in.

I have searches saved in CoTweet that highlight articles, comments and press releases. When events, such as ERE’s Social Recruiting Summit tomorrow, I’ll save a search for that hashtag and check in on the feed every once and awhile.

Things I search for:

• Social Media
• Social Recruiting
• Non-Profit
• Writing
• Quotes (for inspiration!)

Things I don’t search for:

• Skeezy politicians
• Murder/Gun violence
• White collar crime
• Gosselin

Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections provide more credible suggestions on relevant reads than Yahoo.com. The homepages of my social networking sites have become more of a news source for me.

Confession #2: I spend more time with Google Reader than with my best friend. I go to one page where I can categorize, sort and keep up-to-date with my favorite bloggers’ posts. One of my favorite feeds (with too many articles to absorb): Mashable.

Do you make a conscious effort to filter out the not-so-news-worthy “news”? Are you successful? What tools do you use?