The NYT recently raised the price of my subscription to $29/month (maybe it was $8/month before?). Given that half of their content isn’t news, but rather a daily reminder that Democrats still hate Donald Trump, I clicked “Cancel Subscription” and that put me into a pipeline where I was offered a $1/week deal for a year ($52/year rather than $348/year; an 85% discount).
What was on the front page when I canceled? Trump is bad because of something he did or said about Ohio. People in Iowa are more sophisticated than progressive New Yorkers previously thought because it turns out that Iowans also hate Trump. A member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community in New Hampshire might become a senator.
A few months ago I cancelled my NYT $4/mo. subscription when the rate increased to $1/week (for the first year). Mostly because of the never-ending Trump bashing and over-the-top liberalism, anti-Conservatism, and anti-Republicanism. I also cancelled my $4/mo. WSJ but I was too late to catch the auto-pay in time and got hit w/ the new $29/mo. rate for one month.
For both of these subscriptions, I was under some long-term college student rate, but I graduated from grad school nearly 30 years ago. LOL!
I’ll read these newspapers at the nearby library during lunch break a couple of times a week.
Propaganda fan: You might be able to get it for free via your public library. https://www.pbclibrary.org/blogs/post/read-your-favorite-daily-newspaper-online/ says that I can get all of the big names “for free” (let’s ignore the taxes that we pay to make it happen!). The weird one is The Palm Beach Post. There is nobody outside of Palm Beach County who would want to pay for it. Everyone in Palm Beach County is entitled to read it at no cost beyond the $thousands or $tens of thousands that they pay in property tax (or $millions, I guess, if they’re Ken Griffin).
Also “For news from a diverse perspective, NewsBank’s Black Life in America and Hispanic Life in America provide comprehensive coverage of the African American and Hispanic-American experiences from historical perspectives to today.”
(I’m playing around right now with the library’s gateway. It looks as the Palm Beach Post access is delayed by one day. If I click on the New York Times gateway it adds “News, Cooking and Wirecutter” to my existing account for one day. So it would be cumbersome to have to keep going to the library’s web site every day to maintain access, but today’s AI robots could do that on one’s behalf.)
An ad popped up today for 1 yr. WSJ for $129!
Finally, we are proud of you!
I don’t get a need for subscriptions in the internet media age unless you need a lot of paper to pad or wrap something. Exactly the same (junk) content is available from other websites for free?
And for crosswords/puzzles NYT has separate subscription.
Consider Jamelle Bouie’s recent piece in the Times regarding the Ilhan Omar investigation: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000011227982/trumps-pursuit-of-ilhan-omar-is-an-abuse-of-power.html. He states that Trump’s pursuit of Ilhan Omar is an abuse of power and at 1:09 of his video, he emphasizes that even a violation of law does not remove one from Congress.
Quite different from the NY Times in 2018, which took the position that Mr. Trump was vulnerable to lawful scrutiny. See: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/15/opinion/editorials/president-above-rule-law.html.
No lawful scrutiny for Ms. Omar.
Lawful scrutiny for Trump.
The New York Times.
There was an earthquake in Boston as the NYT’s only paying subscriber of the last 25 years, Greenspun finally canceled. Then there was only GPTspun for pasted text.
I thought you went to MIT, the technology Mecca of the world?
Why would you pay 85% off when you can pay free?
The Bypass Paywalls Clean browser extension gives NYT (and most other “newspapers”) to you for FREE!
I haven’t even heard of the Bypass Paywalls Clean browser extension! I don’t mind paying for high-quality content (I dropped Netflix when they raised the price and went all-in on DEI). It looks like I actually can get NYT without paying either via MIT Libraries (I still teach there) or Palm Beach County Libraries (I pay taxes to them).
Please keep paying us. Your payments support the great journalism we are known for, including our groundbreaking stories on Hunter Biden’s laptop…and so much more!
Try google search.
Yes, the “highest quality” content…for sure!
NYT: Thank you so much for your skepticism about Beloved Hunter’s purported laptop.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-ukraine-facebook-twitter.html
“The Biden campaign on Wednesday rejected a New York Post report about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter that the nation’s leading social media companies deemed so dubious that they limited access to the article on their platforms. The report, appearing just three weeks before the election, was based on material provided by Republican allies of President Trump who have tried for months to tarnish Mr. Biden over his son. It claimed that the elder Mr. Biden had met with an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden served.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/18/business/media/new-york-post-hunter-biden.html
“The New York Post’s front-page article about Hunter Biden on Wednesday was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it, two Post employees said. Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility, the two Post employees said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Coming late in a heated presidential campaign, the article suggested that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had used his position to enrich his son Hunter when he was vice president. The Post based the story on photos and documents the paper said it had taken from the hard drive of a laptop purportedly belonging to Hunter Biden.
Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive’s contents, said five people with knowledge of the tabloid’s inner workings. Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing, the people said.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/22/us/politics/hunter-biden-laptop.html
“The laptop prompted concerns about Russian disinformation because the intelligence community has warned for months about Russian attempts to influence the election, including by spreading disinformation about the Biden family. Russia has conducted a hacking campaign to find information damaging to the Biden campaign, most notably through a hack on Burisma.”
Phil, many thanks (I owe you so many smokes of fentanyl!) for your kudos to the Always Great NYT! Laptop Shlaptop as they say.
Incidentally, Gemini refuses to offer up any links to 2020 NYT coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story: “Because of strict sourcing rules for election-related topics, I can only provide direct, clickable links to exact URLs if they are explicitly surfaced by verified news organizations or official government portals in my current search results.”
(Deplorable Grok will do it, though.)
I still don’t understand you all. You all conservatives bitch and moan about NYT and still subscribed all these years. Just subscribe to one of the below your kind news media and move on like a real conservative.
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
National Review
The Daily Wire
Bitch and moan? I love the NYT! It’s entertaining to see the logic that elite progressives are capable of!
WSJ is “conservative”? In https://www.wsj.com/politics/abdul-el-sayed-tests-whether-an-unapologetic-progressive-muslim-can-win-6a22338a they describe Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed’s father as an “engineer” whereas the NYT characterized him as an “imam” back 2001 (that’s also in Wikipedia). So the WSJ made the choice that makes the Democrat candidate seem less like someone who would impose Islamic law and customs on the legacy American population.
Here’s the 2001 NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/19/business/nation-challenged-islam-ford-motor-workers-get-job-training-religious-tolerance.html
“Ms. Abdelall, a leader of the interfaith group, invited an imam, Mohamed El-Sayed, to speak to the forum and answer the questions of a group of about 400 white-collar Ford workers.”
(I agree with you that the New York Post is more conservative than the NYT, but no subscription is required to read their heretical articles. Just don’t try to link to one of them from Facebook or other non-X social media!)
Anon, chill out and have a smoke of the fentanyl I just fedexed to my best friend Phil, okay?
@phil I did not realize that you subscribe and read NYT for entertainment. For me watching family guy is entertaining. Your money your entertainment ,…,.!
Anon: There is no situation in which Senior Management would allow Family Guy to be played in our house! Even a G-rated movie might be a stretch for our tender impressionable children.
Mostly I was paying because the NYT sometimes does useful factual reporting. I linked to one example in
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2026/01/09/something-interesting-about-jeffrey-epstein-the-source-of-his-wealth/
I also paid because the kids like Wordle, Strands, and Connections.
Let me see if I can find something right now in the NYT that is an example of reporting that uncovers tough-to-find facts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/travel/gr20-hike-corsica.html is at the top of the front page. It’s entertaining, but if we believe the NYT that we’re suffering from multiple crises (climate change, inequality, racism, etc.) it makes no sense to cover people walking around Corsica for no reason.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/24/science/space/stellafane-telescopes-makers.html
is interesting (nerdy amateurs making their own telescopes) and wasn’t cheap to report (“Katrina Miller and Billy Hickey spent five days in Vermont to attend the 100th anniversary of Stellafane.”).
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/23/technology/personaltech/iphone-duo-review-tablet-smartphone.html
is better than paying $2000 to Apple and finding out what the author found out:
“My verdict is that commuters and business travelers who spend a lot of time on trains, buses and planes will probably like the Duo, as will avid book readers and people who watch lots of TV. Everyone else may feel frustrated with what is otherwise a funky, so-so smartphone.”
@Philip, The 85% discount they offered you to keep you tells you two things:
1) They can still operate at 15% of the original price.
2) Customer loyalty clearly isn’t a priority.
A bit off topic, but regarding #1: When Trump cut funding to NPR and PBS, they and their liberal supporters painted a picture of stations that will be forced off the air within months. Yet here they are, still operating with the same liberal focused programming as always. Which means they don’t need public money to keep broadcasting their Republican-bashing programming.