We finally did it; we took the plunge. After years of debate and refusing to kowtow to the man and feeling like maybe it was unjustified and insisting that information should be free, gosh darn it, we finally capitulated and paid for a digital subscription to The New York Times. (And yes, this is significant enough to warrant its own post!)
For quite awhile, we have been limping by on the 10 free articles per month per device the Times allowed us to peruse for free, running into frustration mid-month when we reached our limit or strategically saving up articles to be read while we were traveling. Sometimes, since we share a desktop computer at home, we would each be silently cursing the other when we found out we couldn't read something that looked interesting because we had already reached that computer's limit (or maybe that was just me doing the cursing?).
But the straw that broke this particular camel's back was the realization that ultimately, we really have fairly limited access to global and American news here. We don't have cable, so we don't get very many English language television channels and the programming on the one news channel we do get is timed crazily, so we could never just sit down and watch a comprehensive broadcast when we had time in the evenings. Plus, we simply haven't even turned on the television to watch actual television in months so now we don't even think about finding that one channel anymore. As I have said before, we also get Al Jazeera English on the car radio, which does do the headlines on the hour, so we can get news there, but (not surprisingly), their coverage of Western news leaves a little to be desired.
Which leaves us the Internet, and what we can access for free is not ideal. Have you spent any time on CNN.com lately? Don't. Just...don't. I'm not even going to link to it (or any of these sites, for that matter). I mean, CNN on television is bad enough, mostly sensationalistic pseudo-news reported far too early to be useful, but CNN.com is just abysmal. The coverage of everything is quixotic at best, patently incompetent at worst. For these same reasons, sites like msnbc.com or Foxnews.com are also useless. BBC.com is better, thankfully, but again, every now and then it's nice to have the American perspective to compare with the thoughts from across that pond. NPR.com is pretty disappointing to me, actually, given that I was a diehard NPR listener in my previous life. While I find the radio broadcast entertaining and informative, the same mix of news and features on the website always makes me feel like I'm missing the meat of the news, for some reason.
And so we buckled. Or, more accurately, I buckled and told the husband we were subscribing. And we got a lovely deal, actually, which gives us access to both the national and international versions on the desktop and our phones for the same monthly cost of our subscription to Netflix, which seems more than fair. We should probably pay at least as much for quality news as we do for (sometimes) quality entertainment! Granted, the kids use Netflix much, MUCH more frequently than we do, but still. And we're still paying less than we would be for cable either here or in the States, so everyone wins!
Which means, now I can curl up with the "Sunday Book Review" and read fabulous pieces like this one to my heart's content or delve deep into my favorite Times blog Motherlode without worrying that I am wasting my 10 articles. Huzzah!
For quite awhile, we have been limping by on the 10 free articles per month per device the Times allowed us to peruse for free, running into frustration mid-month when we reached our limit or strategically saving up articles to be read while we were traveling. Sometimes, since we share a desktop computer at home, we would each be silently cursing the other when we found out we couldn't read something that looked interesting because we had already reached that computer's limit (or maybe that was just me doing the cursing?).
But the straw that broke this particular camel's back was the realization that ultimately, we really have fairly limited access to global and American news here. We don't have cable, so we don't get very many English language television channels and the programming on the one news channel we do get is timed crazily, so we could never just sit down and watch a comprehensive broadcast when we had time in the evenings. Plus, we simply haven't even turned on the television to watch actual television in months so now we don't even think about finding that one channel anymore. As I have said before, we also get Al Jazeera English on the car radio, which does do the headlines on the hour, so we can get news there, but (not surprisingly), their coverage of Western news leaves a little to be desired.
Which leaves us the Internet, and what we can access for free is not ideal. Have you spent any time on CNN.com lately? Don't. Just...don't. I'm not even going to link to it (or any of these sites, for that matter). I mean, CNN on television is bad enough, mostly sensationalistic pseudo-news reported far too early to be useful, but CNN.com is just abysmal. The coverage of everything is quixotic at best, patently incompetent at worst. For these same reasons, sites like msnbc.com or Foxnews.com are also useless. BBC.com is better, thankfully, but again, every now and then it's nice to have the American perspective to compare with the thoughts from across that pond. NPR.com is pretty disappointing to me, actually, given that I was a diehard NPR listener in my previous life. While I find the radio broadcast entertaining and informative, the same mix of news and features on the website always makes me feel like I'm missing the meat of the news, for some reason.
And so we buckled. Or, more accurately, I buckled and told the husband we were subscribing. And we got a lovely deal, actually, which gives us access to both the national and international versions on the desktop and our phones for the same monthly cost of our subscription to Netflix, which seems more than fair. We should probably pay at least as much for quality news as we do for (sometimes) quality entertainment! Granted, the kids use Netflix much, MUCH more frequently than we do, but still. And we're still paying less than we would be for cable either here or in the States, so everyone wins!
Which means, now I can curl up with the "Sunday Book Review" and read fabulous pieces like this one to my heart's content or delve deep into my favorite Times blog Motherlode without worrying that I am wasting my 10 articles. Huzzah!
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