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A few days ago, I was asked what types of things do I like to read.  Since I’ve been asked before and always want to ask the same thing of my friends and people I meet who think in unique ways, I thought a good way to ask everyone what they read would be to run through a quick list of the blogs, books and media outlets I follow regularly.  I’ll start here with the blogs I follow.  Let me know what you think of the sites and let me know of any others that I should check out.  Hopefully we’ll kick up some debate and generate ideas for future points of discussion.  Will add the links to the blogroll when I figure out how to do that.

BLOGS & NEWSLETTERS

Term Sheet by Dan Primack: A great daily newsletter by Dan Primack of Fortune focused on the Private Equity and VC industry.  Highlights notable transactions and people news (when deal professionals move among funds our strike out on their own).  What I like most is the short editorials at the top of each email, “Random Ramblings”, I enjoy Dan’s opinion on various issues that are generally less scrutable to people not in the PE industry, either because they are a bit arcane or thinly covered elsewhere.  A good example is recent research he highlighted about the relative underperformance of co-investments by Limited Partners.

Driven Forward: Glen Hellman is a former turnaround CEO turned Executive Coach.  I saw him speak at a local entrepreneur speaker series and enjoy his humor and approach to business management, startups and the like.  He posts pretty much every day and usually brings enough humor (often his posts are laugh out loud funny) that it quickly turned into part of my daily lunch routine.  He’s on my list of “People doing what I think I want to do with my life” and as such, I haven’t worked up the nerve to reach out to meet him.

Fred Wilson: Fred Wilson is a well-known venture investor who blogs every day.  His posts are usually short and frequently pretty interesting.  My favorite posts of his are usually when he shares opinions on current events in the startup / venture investing / technology space.

New Atlantic Ventures:  The blog of a VC fund that tends to have really high quality posts.  Many of the posts are written by folks at the fund and reposted after being published to Forbes and the like.  The posts I remember off the top of my head are mostly about Healthcare, Education and Technology and generally have an embedded thesis or fairly concrete view of the world.  Usually 2-4 posts per month, I always read them.

Becker-Posner Blog:  I love this blog.  Its written by Richard Posner, a judge in the US Court of Appeals and senior lecturer at UChicago’s Law School, and Gary Becker, a Noble prize winning economist from Chicago’s Booth School of Business.  They present differing – sometimes opposing, sometimes differently framed –  perspectives on economic issues via pairs of blog posts.  I’ve never read a pair of posts I didn’t enjoy, but they end up sending your mind on a tangent for the day as you think through who you agree with more.  My buddy Dave and I have thought about starting our own version of this blog a dozen times, but I think we agree too much on most issues and neither of us are fluid enough in our writing skills that we could produce quality posts frequently enough without quitting our day jobs.  I usually read it in binge sessions every month or so.  The posts are more dense than casual reading in my opinion so I usually read them when I have time to absorb them, plus I haven’t figured out how to have it delivered to my inbox so its not always front of mind (Ever since Google Reader shut down I haven’t done well with RSS feeds).

Kiplinger’s: My father-in-law shared Kiplinger’s weekly newsletter with me years ago and I stand by my initial impression, it is one of the most useful summaries of economic/business/government news available because of its brevity and ability to frame information in the context of business decision making.  I read it every Saturday morning, first thing.

ProductHunt (not really a blog, but I check it like its a blog): Cool new site that’s popped up over the last few months.  It posts a ‘Top 10′ list (not sure if it’s always 10) of startups that Ryan Hoover, the founder of the site, uses to share opinions and give feedback to the listed start ups’ founders.  Really cool site, I usually visit once a week to check out a weeks-worth of lists in a sitting.

Potomac TechWire: Daily newsletter that highlights Potomac area tech deals, often redundant with other news sources, but good for catching smaller, local deals.  It’s a quick way to keep tabs on the local goings-on.

Citybizlist.com: Along with Potomac TechWire, I subscribe to DC and Baltimore editions of this newsletter to try to stay aware of what’s happening in my nearest cities from a business perspective.

OnlyOnce:  Found this through Fred Wilson’s blog, Matt Blumberg is an entrepreneur with whom Fred has invested.  Matt is now an author and blogs about being the CEO of a startup.  Only Once refers to the idea that you are only a first time CEO once.  I monitor this blog more than actively read it, the posts are fairly action oriented tips to CEOs, things like hiring and onboarding employees, so more pertinent to folks who have started and are walking the path vs in the exploring phase where I currently categorize myself.

Seth Godin:  I enjoy his books more than his blog, but I check it out for inspiration from time to time.  Always upbeat, and more motivational in nature than most of the other stuff I read.  A very “You can do this, just start!” type of vibe.

Cool InfoGraphics: Fun site that sends an infographic daily to your inbox, intended for graphic designers, I check them out because every once in a while there’s interesting content.

Daily Infographics: Ditto

FierceMarkets Newsletters (Mostly Healthcare and Finance): FierceMarkets puts out a few dozen newsletters by market niche.  Most of the articles I read are on healthcare related to my work, it’s a great curated resource once you narrow down which newsletters are most useful to you.

Wakefield National: Relatively new, Wakefield is a startup focused on the startup community, for the most part it helps people find startups looking for early employees.  I enjoy it as a discovery tool to see what types of companies are starting and growing.  I think they have another NYC focused newsletter that I receive as well.

Calculated Risk: A daily summary of economic and other related data.  I usually scan the contents at the start of the email to see if there’s anything of interest to me.  I rarely read more than a couple articles from it a week because the data is on the “raw-er” side, but it has interesting tidbits often enough to keep me checking.