HN Explorer

Ask HN: What news subscription is worth it?

102 points by lawgimenez ↗ HN
My NYTimes subscription is ending next month and I am looking for another news subscription. What news publication is it worthwhile to subscribe to? I’ve read horror stories about dark patterns in cancellation so that should also factor in.

I’m not sure if anyone noticed but NYTimes’ quality has gone downhill for the past 2-3 years and why is there no dark mode on the app? WSJ looks good but there are issues with cancellation.

Edit: I am from Southeast Asia and got lots of family and relatives in the USA, so the obvious interest in Western and EU culture and politics.

255 comments

[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 309 ms ] thread
starwind
I have subscriptions to the Economist (never had a problem pausing or canceling my subscription), the Athletic for sports (they always give me a huge discount when I try to cancel), and since the war in Ukraine started I have subscriptions the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal for $4/month each (those will be a pain in the ass to cancel).

If you're worried about canceling and getting billed, put it on a credit card, and if you still get billed dispute the charge as "unauthorized" and block the merchant

selljamhere
+1 for The Economist. I enjoy their international coverage.
mikebowman
FYI every time I try to cancel my NYT subscription, they give me a deep discount. Also, if you have an All-Access NYT subscription, it now includes The Athletic. I cancelled my Athletic subscription a while back, but since it's included in NYT now, I'm more inclined to keep my NYT subscription and kill both birds with one stone.
lawgimenez
Yes this was my “trick” before. Right before my NYTimes subscription ends I always take on their $0.25 per month offer but I am not sure if they’re gonna introduce it again this time. Thank you for the advice, I have an Athletic subscription and no idea it is already included in NYTimes. This is a game changer for sure.
lawgimenez
I’m not familiar with WSJ, how good is there coverage on world news?
starwind
Pretty good I gotta say. More emphasis on business/economic issues than the Times
sgent
Excellent for English Language financial news, and probably just OK compared to the NYT for political news.
slg
> the Athletic for sports

I would be wary of supporting The Athletic at this exact moment. Just last week they issued new corporate directives to their journalists barring them from covering anything political. This might sound good in theory, people follow sports as an escape from their life including topics like politics. However, there is no way to talk about sports intelligently without the ability to discuss politics.

What is currently happening in golf is a great example. A new league has just started up that is financed by the Saudi government as a means of sportswashing[1] their international reputation. Discussing a league like this without touching on politics would be both inherently lacking and a gift to the Saudi government.

I would recommend a subscription to Defector if you are looking to a sports site to support. Here is their article[2] on the new rules at The Athletic.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportswashing

[2] - https://defector.com/the-nyt-owned-athletic-lays-down-new-no...

Amorymeltzer
Absolutely recommend Defector. Hands-down the best place on the internet, just a joy of skilled folks who love and care about what they do, no funny business.
Hel5inki
I went from WSJ to Barron’s to Barron’s and Bloomberg to now just Bloomberg. As far as unsubscribing from any of those I haven’t found it too difficult
di4na
The Financial Times is the best Western generalist publication by far.

It is... hard to do better.

SaintGhurka
I subscribe to FT and get the physical paper.

What makes it so useful to me is that its political bias is largely divorced from American politics. They may have a bias on topics in Britain, but my American sensibilities aren't tuned to pick up on them.

Also, financial news sources in general don't spend a lot of time on the highly charged red vs blue stories unless they somehow affect markets or the economy.

2OEH8eoCRo0
I do NYT Sunday delivery as well as The New Yorker, Economist, and The Atlantic print editions.

I think that I enjoy The Atlantic and The New Yorker the most but Economist and NYT are more information dense.

I mostly read my news in print, offline, and don't bother with the apps except I do like the live coverage on NYT app.

prash_ant
Subscription to your regional or local newspaper will help you connect more with your community. We have so many wonderful regional newspapers. You can choose from your region.

  - Los Angeles Times
  - Chicago Tribune
  - The Boston Globe
  - San Francisco Chronicle
  - Miami Herald
  - Dallas Observer
  - Houston Chronicle
  - Denver Post
  - Star Tribune
vincentmarle
I paid for LA Times but it logged me out so frequently that it became very frustrating to use. NY Times on the other hand never logs me out.
gaws
> I paid for LA Times but it logged me out so frequently that it became very frustrating to use.

Do you clear your browser's cookies often?

thewebcount
I've had that happen with ArsTechnica. I log in, read an article, maybe some comments. My build is finished. I run some tests, do some debugging. I changed a header that everything includes, so here comes another long build. Back to Ars... and I'm logged out. I subscribed specifically to not see ads, and as soon as I'm logged out, ads start showing up. I literally never read more than 1 article per half hour, so it basically defeated the point. I'd be logged out after every article I read. I canceled, which was surprisingly easy given the dark patterns that other people here experience with NYT, et al.

I have a subscription to AppleNews. I don't love it, but I get the same Ars articles with far fewer ads and no auto-play video wasting my bandwidth. I don't love Apple's algorithm for finding me content, but it's not the worst I've seen. Sometimes it's spot-on, and other times way off. What's more irritating to me about it are the following:

1) Shows me an article I'm not interested in, so I don't click it. It keeps showing me that article for the next 10 weeks. Sometimes hides it for a week or two, then suddenly brings it back for no discernible reason.

2) No granularity on how to tell it why you did or didn't like an article in your feed. For example, it was shoving some sex-related article from Cosmo at me. I don't mind sex-related articles. I'm not a huge fan of Cosmo (not really the target demo, but whatever). But if I click "Show me less like this" (thumbs down), is the signal "sex articles," "Cosmopolitan," "articles we've repeatedly shown you that you haven't clicked on," or something else entirely?

3) News sources that I've said I never want to see (Fox News, People Magazine) are sometimes "featured" which means instead of putting a different article where that one would have been, I get a blank spot in the feed that says, "You have asked not to see articles from People magazine." Yeah, thanks. I don't need to be reminded of that. Just put something else there!

4) Sections show up where you have no ability to like, dislike, or remove them. This week it's a section on Major League Baseball, because guess who just got rights to show MLB games? AppleTV+. Great, I don't begrudge others who want to watch baseball. I just couldn't care less and never want to see any article about baseball in my feed. I'm paying for this, so it isn't like they can justify it by, "we need to sell your eyeballs to others to make money."

Given all that, it's still the least-worst option I've found at the moment. It's mostly leading me to just read less news, which is better for me anyway.

larrydag
The primary Dallas local is the Dallas Morning News
Melatonic
Yea I really like going local. Even if something like the LA Times is a huge newspaper they still have a lot of cool little local stories that you would probably never hear about otherwise. Then again I am getting the physical delivery so it may be the format that is encouraging such things as well vs just reading their website.
rootusrootus
I once subscribed to NYT. Canceling required a phone call, and the guy laughed out loud at me when I refused what amounted to a nearly free 6 month extension. Made me so mad, they'll never have me as a customer again.

I also decided I would never buy another subscription to a news site that also has advertising. In my perception, ads seem to be predictive of low quality journalism.

Most recently I've had an Economist subscription. I like them. They don't make canceling as easy as subscribing, and I do hold that against them, though they aren't as terrible as NYT.

But honestly, I let that subscription lapse and I don't buy any news right now. I actively avoid it, in fact. My sanity and happiness needed a break from the drip-drip-drip of negative stressful world events that I have exactly zero control over.

bombcar
This is the way I'd go - subscribe to publications that don't have advertising, or have minimal, and subscribe to ones that are monthly if possible, weekly at worst.

The reality is you do NOT need the day-to-day news, anything that's important will still be talked about in a month.

benjaminbachman
I like the New York Times but I was infuriated by the unsubscribe process. I also turned down a super cheap extension.

I am now subscribed via the Google Play store, which means the NYT loses a big chunk of the money, all so I can be guaranteed an easy cancellation button.

lawgimenez
I can easily cancel from the nytimes.com website by going to my account settings.
rootusrootus
That must be new, maybe in response to some recent FTC opinions that every web site should have a cancelation option that was equivalently easy to the subscribe option. Used to be you could only cancel over the phone.
oxfeed65261
I just now unsubscribed from NYT, in response to this thread. I had to do an online chat, but at least it wasn’t an overly prolonged process. I am quite certain that I did not have an option to unsubscribe from account settings.

I also unsubscribed from The Washington Post. It did have a non-chat-based unsubscribe option, which I greatly appreciated.

I also unsubscribed from The Economist. It was the worst. They went through multiple but-here’s-an-even-better-deal stuff, then tried to subscribe me to email newsletters.

Thanks, HN, for the incentive to do this; I had meant to for some time.

WalterBright
I didn't have any trouble cancelling the NYT. My credit card number changed, and that was that :-)
xeromal
That sounds like tremendous trouble if you have your card on any sites like Amazon.
WalterBright
It was indeed a nuisance, but when a fraudulent transaction appeared on my statement, it had to be done. I just found it convenient to not update the card on the NYT.
silisili
Virtual cards are great for this. My brother keeps recommending privacy.com, I need to look into it.
xeromal
I used virtual cards for decades. PayPal had a Firefox extension that did this in the early aughts.

I used getfinal.com for several years too but they went bankrupt. I don't even try anymore

cgriswald
I had a newspaper send me to collections when I tried that; over a matter of about $18 for newspapers they never delivered because I hadn't paid.
WalterBright
The NYT cut me off when the old card got declined, so if they had sent it to a collection agency, I would have disputed it.
thetopher
I will never subscribe to the NYT again. Unsubscribing was an infuriating process.

I love The Economist, and their podcasts. I've never had to unsubscribe because I just pre-pay for 1-year subscription offers that I find on Slickdeals.

2OEH8eoCRo0
I decided (other than this site) to actively avoid all news that has a comment section.
sshine
> My sanity and happiness needed a break from the drip-drip-drip of negative stressful world events that I have exactly zero control over.

I used to be engaged in politics (volunteering at elections, doing administrative parliamentary work, community boards, and having opinions about matters). Becoming apolitical has removed a burden in my life. I don't watch horror movies, and I don't watch the news. I don't subscribe to anxiety and violence, and I just accept and cherish that there is peace in my area of the world.

I followed the Ukraine war out of a sense of necessity; I have friends who went to the border to help refugees cross and prevent human trafficking. If you're not doing something like that, I'm not sure that the combined violence and pain in the world is something we, on average as individuals of our species, are well-equipped to handle.

threatofrain
I think the difficulty of following news with any sense of fluency, not to mention more in-depth technical issues like energy and ecology, makes me think that democracy is at its stressing point. Education alone cannot be the answer — unless we think we can educate people to the point of being general experts on such a broad but critical slate of issues like energy, geopolitical strategy, domestic healthcare, etc.

Perhaps the future of democracy is made of voters who subscribe to institutions of intellectual or moral credibility that tell people directly how to vote (churches, policy groups) rather than a firehose of content where you make up your own mind on how to vote. It sounds more anti-intellectual than it is, but many people are already cognitively and emotionally maxed out.

corrral
Very little news needs to be followed to be a good citizen of a democracy. Local news, sure, on perhaps a weekly or monthly basis (i.e. you probably don't need to check in every day). National, state level (at least for states that aren't so tiny that state news is local news), and international, perhaps quarterly, but you don't really need much of that.

A better use of time for someone wanting to be a good citizen would be reading major books and papers in political philosophy, political science, international relations, public policy, economics, statistics, media studies, history, et c. Not the news.

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mythopedia
Seems like in an ideal world political parties would be the "institutions of intellectual or moral credibility that tell people directly how to vote". Of course, in the current United States that doesn't work because there is a practical limit of 2 major parties, and neither are really bastions of intellectual or moral credibility.

I'm not super well-versed in non-US politics, so I wonder if there is any democracy where parties actually work in that ideal way?

juve1996
I don't think things are much different than they were, say, 100 years ago. Back then there was a dearth of information, so you needed representatives, or parties, to vote in your interest when you had to do other things.

Now we have a glut of information, but the problem is the same - there are so many topics, it's hard to prioritize and determine what is necessary or important.

Look at our government. We have committees, and experts brought to those committees to help them draft law. Instead of trying to be an expert in everything, we should focus on what we want to be experts in, moving forward in these areas and trusting those working in other areas to do what's best. There is no other realistic path.

t0bia_s
It is hard to trust any expert/gonverment if main motivation is profit. Look what is happening right now. Poor are more poor and rich are getting rich even more. So, naturally, trust in expertise is relative if it cannot bring you food for survive.
quartesixte
> Perhaps the future of democracy is made of voters who subscribe to institutions of intellectual or moral credibility that tell people directly how to vote

It already is this way, and has been this way for centuries. Be it religion, ethnic identity, economic class, geographic loyalty, or political ideologies. The average voter is not an independent minded participant.

Political parties. Community Organizations. The Political Machines of the Gilded Age and the Unions of the late industrial.

Human nature never changes. Democracy just gives us a chance to have a say in how society harnesses that nature, rather than a small group of people born into power because their ancestors were part of the inner circle of victors in the war that established their nation.

Edit: I’m big believer in democracy and republics, but a really cynical take on the whole system is “the peasants get a chance to choose who which aristocrat rules them…and occasional elevate one of their own.”

juice_bus
I had a similar ordeal cancelling The Economist subscription in 2020.

I had to call someone (offshore) who tried to retain me with months free, and then started trying to push emails (???) which I explicitly said no to... and then they turned them all on anyway when I cancelled. I don't have a way to turn them off so they go straight to spam now ("unsubscribe" doesn't work, and I don't care enough to escalate any further)

Never subscribing for news again - they're killing themselves at this point.

the_biot
Yup, The Economist are terrible spammers. I tried many many times to get them to stop sending me all that garbage about their events and whatever, and they just don't do it. Fortunately I have an email address custom to them, so I just deleted it. Now when my subscription lapses I won't get the notifications.

Here's the thing about The Economist: everything they do that is not related to journalism is a complete shitshow. Subscriptions, phone app, spamming, just awful.

nindalf
I can’t say I’ve had an issue with spam. I remember receiving a few emails that I unsubscribed from. The link at the bottom of the email worked.

Phone app - subjective, but it’s one of the few I allow on my phone.

jasomill
Agree, but this isn't all bad: their broken Web platform gave me free online access for years, because I noticed the "temporary instant access" link from the original subscription confirmation email was both reusable, and had no apparent expiration date, so continued to yield "temporary instant access" on-demand for at least five years after my subscription lapsed, and only stopped working as an apparent side-effect of a site reorganization that included a new authentication flow that wasn't compatible with the old link.

As far as I know, it'd still work if I took the time to figure out how to enter promo codes into the new system, but, hey, it was a good run.

Veen
It's a little easier now. They have a chat interface. When I cancelled recently I included "I'm not interested in offers for reduced price subscriptions" in my first message. They didn't push it and my subscription was canceled 5 minutes or so.
cgriswald
I wonder if it is still possible to subscribe by mail. I originally subscribed that way awhile ago, but within the last couple of years let my subscription lapse and that was the end of it (other than the frequent letters trying to get me to re-subscribe).
TameAntelope
For WSJ if you change your billing address to California you can cancel online. I dunno if that's true for every subscription, though.
death916
Its a california law so most places accept it.
tootie
There's no incentive to ever make cancellation easy nor any incentive to make cancellers feel valued.
indigochill
Of course there is. If you piss someone off while they're cancelling, it's less likely you'll get repeat business. People cancel and then renew subscriptions on all kinds of things all the time.
tgsovlerkhgsel
Aside from making it much less likely that customers will return, it'll also lead to threads (and word of mouth) like this which will deter some, and if you overdo it, it even risks attracting regulation.

That may not be enough of an incentive to overcome the immediate benefit, but it's not nothing.

Melatonic
I subscribe to a big paper in the city I live in (like, the actual sunday paper delivery). I tried to explain MULTIPLE times to their support people that I did not want all of the extra advertisement crap that came with the paper (pretty standard with any paper - not the small amount of ads/classifieds in the paper itself - all of the extra pamphlets they include)

Their support people could just not even comprehend WHAT I was even talking about - they kept circling back to "pop-up ads" and if I had tried a pop-up blocking extension. It was a never ending circle of confusion :-D

paulcole
> I tried to explain MULTIPLE times to their support people that I did not want all of the extra advertisement crap that came with the paper

Is this even an option they offer or just one you wished existed?

Melatonic
No idea but I figured I might as well try. I would have been willing to pay a few bucks extra if it was - relatively cheap just for sunday delivery as it is. Mainly thought it was funny they were so confused
paulcole
It's not like asking to leave pickles off your burger. I'm kind of amazed that anybody would make this request and think it reasonable but shoot your shot I guess.
rabbits77
Yes, as a former paperboy I can say newspapers (obviously!) don’t have some bespoke assembling process for each customer that would allow for this level of individualization.
zja
Forcing you to talk to someone to unsub is a gross dark pattern, but fwiw, I used the live chat and it wasn’t that bad.
cgriswald
We started receiving the Sunday paper from one of the local papers around here. We all checked our accounts and none of us had been charged. We didn't get mail, email, or anything else from this paper. Originally I thought it must have been someone else's newspaper, so I just left it out there to see if anyone came asking and also asked a couple neighbors, but nothing. Figured whoever it was would call the paper and complain, but this went on for about 12 Sundays and ended up resolving itself somehow (maybe the subscription lapsed?). Just ended up throwing them in the recycling as a matter of course.

There was no way in hell I was going to bother with a call to the newspaper. They'd be confused for the first half of the conversation, then even if they figured it out, they'd spend the second half trying to sell me a subscription, like I wasn't already getting it for free.

musictubes
In the mid 90s I bought some VHS tapes from Playboy. They put me on a subscription to the magazine. Never subscribed, was never charged for it. I had just gotten out of college and so was still living at my mother’s place. That was a little embarrassing. Once I made it clear I wasn’t actually interested in the magazine, her husband grabbed them as they came in. I forgot about it.

My mother eventually divorced him and one day I was visiting and she pointed out that Playboy was still being delivered and that she certainly didn’t have any interest in it. That was 8 years after they were first being sent. Got on the phone and thankfully the unsubscribe process was easy.

mywacaday
I've been through that twice but now I'm on a $1 a month subscription which is worth it even if I read nothing some months.
cube2222
I've also had that experience at one point (cancelling NYT sub over the phone).

Then there was a big discount, I bought it again, wasn't reading it again, so cancelled it recently again...

and this time there was actually a button in the UI to do it in a few seconds. Might be related to me being in the EU though.

atmosx
I always use cards I can freeze or PayPal and the like, so I don’t have to call anyone, I just freeze the card or stop recurring payments via PayPal.
renewiltord
I live in California, so all of this is online. I just go online and cancel. I remember before, though, when I had to call. Everyone was total shit: the Economist, the WSJ, the NYT.

But California baby. You can hate us. But we lead the USA into a better world.

bradgessler
News websites are so terrible about canceling that its actually a feature on a news site I built at https://legiblenews.com/upgrades/hassle-free-cancelation

It has to be one of the stupidest features I’ve ever written, but sadly it’s where we are today with the average news website.

Another really stupid feature is simply building a news website that doesn’t blast you in the face with 10Mb of ads. Legible News has a 100 score on Google Page Speed insights: https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Flegiblene.... It FULLY loads in about 1s on mobile and desktop.

Compare that to NYTimes that takes about 10s to fully load: https://pagespeed.web.dev/report?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytim.... Pretty much any news website you plug in there will get a score of 25, take 10s to load, and hardcore spy on you. Thanks advertisements!

I wrote more about the many problems of traditional news websites at https://legiblenews.com/about.

Check it out at https://legiblenews.com/ — daily news is free, there’s no third party scripts or tracking, and if you like it the cost is $10/year at https://legiblenews.com/plus (I’m probably going to raise prices soon by a few bucks)

yokoprime
News services, like the NYT, is doing themselves a HUGE disservice by making cancelling so hard. I’ve subscribed to NYT twice, and in general I’ve been very impressed by the quality of their content. But the second time I had to go through all their BS to cancel, i swore I would never subscribe again.
wollsmoth
I'm actually fairly happy with NYT. They still cover most topics, although generally I agree they aren't as great as they were. They are pretty much my local paper too I guess.

I like to stop by a news stand and pick up an Atlantic, or New Yorker from time to time, and whatever else seems interesting.

sbf501
Another vote for The Economist.

It is a weekly publication with good writers. Meaning: it is rarely, if ever, sensational, and covers prominent issues around the globe so I stay informed after about 60 minutes of reading. I still haven't figured out which way the editorial staff swings because they do a good job of keeping explicit bias out, but they seem to be left of center.

I also subscribe to The Atlantic. They are solid long-form reporting, but occasionally they get a really far-out article.

I used to get The Baffler, great out-of-the-box ideas, but the content was too depressing.

the_biot
The Economist is very definitely on the right economically, and on the left socially. In other words it's classic liberal, and they regularly make that clear. They've been going with more opinion pieces in the last few years, which is not an improvement IMHO.

Only real downside to The Economist though is their app. It's a complete embarrassment, the worst I've seen. It's comically bad, don't-just-fire-them-shoot-them bad.

n8cpdx
The app could be better, but the access to actual human narration of all articles outweighs the downsides IMO. Maybe the reading experience is bad?

For listening, I download the weekly copy and that makes it a bit more reliable.

If anyone from the economist is listening, please give me the option of putting the next 15s, previous 15s buttons on the Lock Screen (it matches what I do for podcasts).

the_biot
Yes, the reading experience is what's so bad. Very often when you're reading it'll suddenly crash, or blank the page, or switch to a random page in the next issue, etc etc etc.

A few months ago they broke swiping, if you can believe that. It's now suddenly hard to swipe to the next article, because it wants to scroll up or down instead. How the hell do you break swiping in an Android app in 2022!

And to top it all off, the insult on top of the ridiculously bad experience: the regular pop-up (when you're reading), to ask how you like the app? Type your feedback here! Which is 100% ignored of course, for YEARS. I've taken to just sending in "fuck you".

What, me bitter?

n8cpdx
It sounds like the Android app is worse than the iOS app. Unfortunately, that means my recent discovery won't help you, but will hopefully help others:

With the Apple News app, you can log in to your Economist account and get access to the economist content through the News app.

antognini
For what it's worth I was having exactly the same experience as you on my Pixel 1. But a few weeks ago I upgraded to the latest pixel and the app works great now.

I suspect that the app is just so heavy and bloated that it performs really poorly on older phones.

Not that there's any excuse for that. All it should be doing is displaying some text so you'd think it would be pretty lightweight.

skrebbel
I agree that the app is awful (in particular, it's both slow and buggy), but the content in the app is amazing. Eg it has posh Brits who sound like they got plucked straight from the country club reading every single article out loud, it's super handy and delightfully done.
fumplethumb
I’ve been reading the Economist digitally using their app for years. They had a few issues over the years - I think they prevented copy/paste for a minute. I was pissed about that.

But now I love the app. The typography is decent, they support light/dark themes, you can play human-read audio of every piece individually, etc.

I’m curious, what are your problems with the app?

kesava
+1 for Economist.

Don't let the titles of New York Review of Books and London Review of Books fool you. They do much longer view of contemporary news but thru book review.

Most news is probably not worth following every day. The rearview mirror of a weekly magazine gives better context than trying to follow most news the same day when details are still ongoing.

lelawobu
I have been happy with Inkl for several years. Curated access to many mainstream sources, including Guardian, Atlantic, Forbes, Financial Times, et al.
giancarlostoro
I personally only reallt pay for WSJ and I guess Apple News but indirectly I am not a fan of Apple News since a number of articles feel politically biased. I just want raw facts not opinion pieces.
tootie
WSJ feels "necessary" but a lot of their coverage and especially opinions are nuts. I expect a pro-business, pro-capitalist slant, but sometimes they go a little too far down the Murdoch ladder. Their coverage of the Durham investigation looks like it was written by Trump campaign staffers.
Bhilai
WSJ, if you can ignore their editorial page, which is so blatantly biased and promotes so much false information that it is a surprise its a part of the same news organization.
gralx
Seconded. I subscribed to Financial Times for a year, whose prose, editorial balance, and coverage insight are noticeably inferior to The Wall Street Journal's. I also subscribed to The Economist and feel it is also inferior, but it is a weekly, so that's kind of comparing kettles and fish.

I subscribe to Noam Chomsky's opinion that the best journalism is found in the financial press because businesses need a more accurate and timely view of what's going on.

And yes, the op-eds are a blemish on the paper's outstanding journalistic reputation. It got jammed full of cronies after News Corp purchased the paper. Its workaday editorial staff remain fiercely independent, however.

bin_bash
agreed. It's expensive, but I bit the bullet and subscribed 2 years ago and I find the non-editorial articles to be incredibly high quality.

The iPad app could be better.

mellosouls
There are some good writers on dedicated subscription platforms, unfortunately forking out for several of them quickly costs substantially more than a single one to a "legacy" provider.

Example: For an alternative view into US politics to some of the hopelessly biased mainstream platforms you could try Tangle, but that's just one unfortunately.

https://www.readtangle.com/

It would be nice if you could collate several of those sort together but I guess that's what the old style providers are still good at.

Brendinooo
Came to endorse Tangle. I’m a huge fan of what is being built there.
whatwhatintheb
I subscribe to the print edition of Jacobin. It's the only one I think is worth paying for these days. Everything else is either pushing scam reflinks (NYT, CNN, etc), complete garbage content (Fox and the like), or straight up falsehoods.

For everything else I evade paywalls either using the bypass paywalls extension or some other method. I explicitly refuse to pay for the content because I want to see these businesses die, and consuming their content without giving them money is one way to help accelerate their demise.

We're in the scam stage of late stage capitalism, and between the climate crisis and the slow decline into populist fascism, our best hope as a species is degrowth.

digianarchist
Another Jacobin subscriber here. I love the art.
mrsaint
Tried various news sources, but got stuck w/ the following subscriptions: Washington Post, Financial Times & The Economist.
lawgimenez
If I may ask why Washington Post? I’m starting to like their news coverage though seems lacking on the opinion and newsletters department.
gaws
What's "lacking" on the opinion and newsletters?
DeathArrow
I came across a guy who reads all the most important news outlets, selects all the important articles, makes digests and sends a news letter daily. It is subscription based.

I just have to find it in my tens of thousands of bookmarks. :(

bluenose69
TheGuardian.com is worth it, in my opinion. It's not expensive, and it gives world news, not just national news. The proofreading on the website is not impressive, though, compared with the weekly paper version (to which I also subscribe).

I've also had WP and NYT subscriptions, and I think these are fine choices. One thing, though: I found it quite difficult to cancel my NYT subscription. Subscriptions are like hash functions -- easy in one direction and hard in the other.

lawgimenez
I can easily cancel on the nytimes.com by going to settings. I’m in Asia though so maybe it is different on your region.
msapaydin
I also like "the guardian", it is also less US centered, and has some great coverage of movies and technology ethics). The only catch is that the android subscription is not valid on the computer or any other device than android.
omega3
Unfortunately the quality has also gone downhill and they’ve switched from news reporting to pushing an agenda.
Veen
It's always had a left-wing angle, but it has become more strident in recent years as the comment section began to dominate. Their straight news reporting is generally pretty good. I read it even though I'm not at all aligned with the politics of many of the writers.
the_biot
They did a piece once on a subject with which I'm very familiar (a fairly controversial thing that happened in my city). They asked for feedback from the public at large before publishing it, and I filled out the questionnaire.

What came out was a disgrace. Straight up propaganda, writing up only the exact words of the only person they interviewed -- easily the most controversial person in the entire city. But you see, he's far left and entirely in line with The Guardian's agenda.

I will never read The Guardian again. It is not a newspaper; it's a propaganda rag of no news value.

tgsovlerkhgsel
I was supporting them for a while.

Unfortunately, over the past few years, they stopped doing journalism and are just trying to output the same misleading clickbait as everyone else, interspersed with ideology-driven, fact-free propaganda pieces.

Aeolun
I used to subscribe to the Guardian, and then I read one article whcih was so blatantly false and politically motivated that it made me question why I have ever decided to subscribe in the first place.

I really, really respect that they make their articles available for free though, so I still feel compelled to pay them, it’s just that I don’t want to read their articles any more.

runjake
I'd recommend avoiding the news. As far as I can tell, the news exists to sell ads.

That said, if you still want to read the news and have access to an Apple device, why not consider Apple News+? It's just about the only news service I'm aware of where you can cancel your subscription without any hassle and you get multiple news sources to boot.

NYT, WSJ, Economist and all the other commonly-recommended news places are a hassle to cancel.

sofixa
> I'd recommend avoiding the news. As far as I can tell, the news exists to sell ads

The ask in this Ask HN is literally about subscription news, which rarely have ads ( for instance FT do, but they're ads for conferences and stuff they run, so it's kind of acceptable).

> That said, if you still want to read the news and have access to an Apple device, why not consider Apple News+?

Same with Google News/Play, subscribing/unsubscribing is quite easy.

chewmieser
Really love the Apple News+ subscription. Includes a ton of content including WSJ.

I also subscribe separately to NYT & Washington Post. All great options.

sgent
I really like Business Week but IDK how hard it is to cancel (have it through Apple News).
etchalon
I'd recommend the Economist. It's a lot less US centric. It is more expensive.
gordon_freeman
For daily News: WSJ and NYT

For global news: The Economist (simply the best!)

For Science news: National Geographic (more on photography and travel side), Scientific American (A little more hard science but especially good to keep up with space related scientific progress)

tootie
Main ones are NYT and Economist. I don't see how the NYT has gone downhill as much as they have broadened a bit into some less serious stuff. Their mainstream news coverage is still second to none.

Otherwise, I lean towards non-profit news like NPR and local affiliates, ProPublica, The Markup, Grist. They all cost nothing, but monthly gifts are accepted.

gordon_freeman
For anyone claiming NYT quality has gone downhill should try and read this article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/08/arts/design/d...

This article has single handedly ignited my interest in arts and paintings. This is just an example but in general what I find great about NYT is the way they do storytelling with mixture of interactive visualization and text-based news and facts.

compscistd
I read this article and a week later came across one of his works (with the signature lemon peel!) at the Met. Would not have been able to recognize him without it. I love how the NYT experiments with different mediums, like their weekly friday news quiz, their stellar cooking app, the crosswords, and now these little art explorations
jumelles
NYT's visual journalism team is top-notch.
pranshum
This was great!

IMO the NYT really shines with their arts/culture sections! Makes the subscription worth it for me personally.

I do feel like their politics/opinion sections have gone downhill.

But every now and then they do a long-form article which convinces me to re-subscribe for a year. This one was incredible: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/the-jungle-pri...

jonplackett
Really enjoyed that! Thanks!

I already subscribe to NYT and this makes me feel good about it.

lawgimenez
Thank you for this one! Do you follow any of their newsletters?
gordon_freeman
Yes I do subscribe to their Upshot and Weekender newsletters. The weekender especially shows the breadth and depth of great NYT journalism.
lawgimenez
Thanks I'm going to look up what Upshot is about.
gaws
Their visual journalism is some of the best in the industry and often gets overshadowed by the print shenanigans.