# New York Times subscription

68 Hacker News commenters recommended New York Times subscription and 190 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (8 owners).

**Verdict:** People recommend it for strong journalism, wide coverage and a good digital product. The most common caveat is aggressive subscription and cancellation tactics.

## Why people recommend it

- Valuable journalism worth paying for (4 comments): "The public good their journalists and editors do out weight the annoyance of those emails." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48407098)) "Legacy media offers information and a perspective that cannot be found everywhere else." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46858700)) "the value of good journalism vastly outweighs the crappy subscription practices" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48403933))
- Good digital product and features (3 comments): "I pay for the NYT - in part, because they do so many "digital" things right compared to other newspapers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48964392)) "I struggle to think how nytimes isn't a perfect fit for a site over an app." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47661901)) "they even have a split reader mode to view both versions side by side" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555170))
- Wide coverage across topics (2 comments): "We're more likely to get a breaking tech story out of CNBC, Reuters or NYT" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47236002)) "It was awesome. Comics, international, regional beats, magazines." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49299835))

## What people warn about

- Perceived political bias and propaganda (7 comments): "one of the most shameless shills of the Iraq War, laundering complete bullshit and lies" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48157963)) "The NYT has problems with being a stooge of the military-industrial complex" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905796)) "they certainly have an editorial bias/agenda on most topics" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47703409))
- Heavy ads, tracking and bloated pages (6 comments): "The volume of tracking pixels and other ad non-sense is truly horrifying." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47393092)) "I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47438670)) "Kept trying to show me bullshit ads, The overall deterioration of the quality of the content especially the opinion section." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47397462))
- Aggressive subscription and cancellation tactics (6 comments): "I deeply respect NYT journalism and I hate with every fiber of my being their revenue-generation / subscription management tactics." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48403763)) "One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48402230)) "Dealing with the eventual cancelation was an absolute pain." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48402348))
- Declining quality, more junk content (4 comments): "I follow the New York Times, as well as being an avid news follower and have found them to be of poor reporting quality a handful of times over the past year." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49090557)) "Fortunately or unfortunately, the New York Times is now a gaming/recipes company with a newspaper attached to it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45883660)) "NYT has gotten so bloated both in actual content (long meandering interviews) as well as the encapsulating junk." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48499127))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [The Economist](https://hackerapproved.com/p/economist.md): 87 recommend
- [Apple News](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-news.md): 29 recommend
- [Wall Street Journal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wall-street-journal.md): 21 recommend
- [The Atlantic magazine subscription](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atlantic.md): 21 recommend
- [Wired magazine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wired.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "New York Times subscription", https://hackerapproved.com/p/new-york-times/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).