I don't want to stick my head in the sand and be unaware of what is going on it the world...
It's literally impossible to do this. I've been trying. Trust me. News will get to you, despite your best efforts to live under a rock.
With all respect, I’d challenge your premise that “sticking your head in the sand” is a bad thing. You’ve already wisely identified that your current “news” viewing habit is a problem, so why not work on that? Unless you’re a political consultant or working in the media, does it really matter? There are many people, including yours truly, who are on low information little to no “news” diets. What you find once you’ve been on a diet for awhile is that so much of what you were getting just isn’t relevant. If it really is important information, say a hurricane heading your way, you’ll hear about it from friends, family, and colleagues.
^^ That, also.
It's important to reason about what's "important to know about" vs what's "important to know about,
now."
To use a recent example, unless you live in Paris, the Notre Dame cathedral burning down falls into the "this is probably worth know about, if irrelevant to my life" category - but is it important to know about
now, while it's happening? Absolutely not. I live in the US. I can't do a thing about it, even if I know about it. Literally nothing. So, knowing the result at some point in the days after is just as good as following the blow-by-blow Twitter feeds and the constantly updated news articles and the socials and... etc, except that I can still get stuff done on Monday that's locally relevant (job, property work, etc).
And if I don't find out about it? It probably wasn't relevant anyway.
I've happily used the excuse to "Did you hear about xyz?" of, "No, I've been trying to live under a rock lately in terms of news, mostly successfully." Someone gets the satisfaction of informing you of something you didn't know about, you get (typically) the super-summarized version, learn something, and haven't wasted time on the process of being attracted to the websites as another set of eyeballs.
It helps to realize that news websites aren't "news" websites anymore. They're eyeball-aggregators, using every dirty trick in the book (for most of them) to keep you attached. You won't believe the 10 dirty tricks websites use to... News companies HATE this Idaho mom's trick... Skip this one food to kill fat fast!
(I make fun of them, but without any exaggeration needed)
Point is, your addiction to the news? Totally awesome for them, because it's literally their goal. Sometime between roughly 2008 and 2015, news transitioned from being more or less about news to being entirely about the viral clicks and likes and relikes and social shares and... etc.
It became, in other words, violently toxic to humans.
You're fine missing out on that.
I gave up social media for Lent, and when I returned, I found myself exposed to all these "controversies" that have absolutely no impact on my life. Just this week alone is the whole Kate Smith God Bless America thing (who cares), Kamala Harris saying we should think about the Boston Bomber being allowed to vote (dumb, but who cares), the usual Trump controversies (it's wet when it rains), more Russia stuff (what are you going to do about it), etc.
It's all such worthless information that steals a vast amount of concentration and focus away from you.
I am reverting back to logging off all social media and all news (Instagram being the lone exception, and I follow only about 50 close friends). Everything else is just noise. News especially is just a step above reality TV in terms of its bullshitometer.
It's amazing what a bit of distance and perspective does, isn't it? I've taken up the habit of largely giving up the internet for lent, annually, and it's awesome. I'm making a few posts on various forums after that (Happy Easter!), but... yeah. You can live without regular forums/social media/etc.
All of this said, if you really want to read the news, I would recommend The Atlantic, the New Yorker, USA Today, WSJ, and your local metro paper. The Atlantic and New Yorker have excellent writing that is up to date but not so reactive to EVERYTHING; WSJ, USA Today, and your local metro will fill in the rest.
I've actually been happy with Pocket. I get a daily list of a few popular articles that I can skim the summaries of and let me know what's going on in general. If it's interesting, I'll read it, but otherwise I just get a morning summary of popular reading of the past week or so, and it's a great way to keep my pulse on the general trends of the world without wasting much time on it.