There's just so much volume out there I subscribe to some newsletters and podcasts but don't pay for any of them. There just isn't a lot that is individually must have.
I subscribe to a ton as well. The production quality isn't anything like NYT or Rolling Stone used to be. That's probably coming. But it'll be interesting to find a sweet spot in between tiktok videos and well written and beautifully presented information. That's a hard place to be consistently.
NYT (and The Economist) are IMO pretty good but they're expensive--especially relative to free. If I were in school or just out of it, I probably wouldn't pay for them like I did for Time and Newsweek when that was more or less your source of news other than subscribing to the big city newspaper or watching the evening news.
There are good magazines out there but overall there's been a decline in quality and, at least in the political/cultural arena, they're mostly some rich person's pet project--though that was historically also the case to some degree.
The price of The Economist has increased rather dramatically in the past few years. In 2012, a print subscription was 137 CAD/yr (183 CAD/yr in 2024 dollars). In 2024 a print subscription is now 429 CAD/yr.
