(1) First of as a beginner it's advisable when choosing a wallet that you go for a hot wallet like metamask, coinbase etc over cold wallets. Though overall cold wallets are better than hot wallets as they are not internet based, making them less vulnerable to online hacks. So if later on you decide to diversify your assets, you can use the both hot and cold wallets. But if you're just starting, hot wallets would be advisable I'd recommend coinbase.
In this part, I guess you are referring to the coinbase wallet, instead of the coinbase exchange and still ideal to use a cold wallet because you can store your assets in the hardware wallet without getting doubts about what if you get hacked with your hot wallets. Below is the recommended wallet for the hot and cold wallets.
Additionally with these you can buy trusted cold wallets with the Trezor and Ledger
https://www.ledger.com/
https://trezor.io/
And also check the supported coin because in different storage only limited support with the coin you want to, also for their trusted resellers world wide you can check here
[1]https://trezor.io/resellers
[2]https://www.ledger.com/reseller
I'm not partnered or a reseller just shares this information for the benefit of the newbies. Also if you don't have a budget yet ideal to use a hot wallet such as the following.
https://electrum.org/#home
https://www.exodus.com/
(2) Next you have to get yourself a reliable and reputable source for bitcoin and crypto related news. They are and they will always be opposing opinions about bitcoin, alot of negative feedbacks and they'll try to dissuade you telling you that you'll only be disappointed if you venture into Bitcoin. That's why as a beginner you need to stick to a reliable source that'll only give you solid facts. These sources might be crypto blogs, a twitter page, podcast or even a friend.
The internet now is free so you can search immediately what is the current update of the cryptocurrency world but again don't rely in just resources only there's some incomplete information given in the different blogs and article so make yourself knowledgeable more in different source of information, once you gather an information filter out it and called as Data to build a concrete understanding if the information is true or just a fake news.