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New York Times subscription

Ranked 2 of 15 online magazines by recommenders

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

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

258 people gave an opinion

recommend it
68
criticize it
190
approval share
26%
Each figure is 2 people. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 12 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: recommended
  2. December 2025: recommended
  3. January 2026: recommended
  4. February 2026: recommended
  5. March 2026: recommended
  6. April 2026: recommended
  7. May 2026: recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)

Owned for 10 years

Median of the 8 owners who said how long they have had it.

Each square is one year.

Why it doesn’t carry the badge

  • 68 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
  • Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Valuable journalism worth paying for

    “The public good their journalists and editors do out weight the annoyance of those emails.”

    Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

    “Legacy media offers information and a perspective that cannot be found everywhere else.”

    Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Best Gas Masks”

    “the value of good journalism vastly outweighs the crappy subscription practices”

    Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”
  • Good digital product and features

    “I pay for the NYT - in part, because they do so many "digital" things right compared to other newspapers”

    Comment from 19 Jul 2026 in “A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game”

    “I struggle to think how nytimes isn't a perfect fit for a site over an app.”

    Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “I Won't Download Your App. The Web Version Is A-OK”

    “they even have a split reader mode to view both versions side by side”

    Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Paralleltext.app – Learn Languages by Reading”
  • Wide coverage across topics

    “We're more likely to get a breaking tech story out of CNBC, Reuters or NYT”

    Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “The Internet's Top Tech Publications Lost 58% of Their Google Traffic Since 2024”

    “It was awesome. Comics, international, regional beats, magazines.”

    Comment from 14 Aug 2026 in “I turned my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper to stop reading on my phone”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Perceived political bias and propaganda

    “one of the most shameless shills of the Iraq War, laundering complete bullshit and lies”

    Comment from 16 May 2026 in “NYT and Vaping: How to Lie by Saying Only True Things”

    “The NYT has problems with being a stooge of the military-industrial complex”

    Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy”

    “they certainly have an editorial bias/agenda on most topics”

    Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto? My Quest to Unmask Bitcoin's Creator”
  • Heavy ads, tracking and bloated pages

    “The volume of tracking pixels and other ad non-sense is truly horrifying.”

    Comment from 15 Mar 2026 in “The 49MB Web Page”

    “I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data.”

    Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “'Your Frustration Is the Product'”

    “Kept trying to show me bullshit ads, The overall deterioration of the quality of the content especially the opinion section.”

    Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “The 49MB Web Page”
  • Aggressive subscription and cancellation tactics

    “I deeply respect NYT journalism and I hate with every fiber of my being their revenue-generation / subscription management tactics.”

    Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

    “One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days.”

    Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

    “Dealing with the eventual cancelation was an absolute pain.”

    Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”
  • Declining quality, more junk content

    “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.”

    Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Delayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'”

    “Fortunately or unfortunately, the New York Times is now a gaming/recipes company with a newspaper attached to it.”

    Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Neros has raised $121M to build military drones”

    “NYT has gotten so bloated both in actual content (long meandering interviews) as well as the encapsulating junk.”

    Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML”

Other online magazines people recommend

The four most recommended other online magazines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

New York Times subscription compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
The Economist877554%1210 yrs11 owners—
New York Times subscriptionThis page6819026%1210 yrs8 owners—
LWN.net subscription531479%1122 yrs4 ownersApproved
Quanta Magazine362064%11——
Apple News298326%7——
See all 15 online magazines, ranked

What people said

40 of the 297 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“Compare this to NYTimes which has been crushing it after implementing their paywalled subscription.”

RecommendsComment from 2 Sep 2026 in “The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice”

“It was awesome. Comics, international, regional beats, magazines.”

RecommendsComment from 14 Aug 2026 in “I turned my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper to stop reading on my phone”

“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.”

CriticizesComment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Delayed Gratification – Proud to Be 'Last to Breaking News'”

“I pay for the NYT - in part, because they do so many "digital" things right compared to other newspapers”

MixedComment from 19 Jul 2026 in “A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game”

“It was great: delivered each morning, no waste paper by the afternoon, a simple subscription, etc.”

MixedComment from 6 Jul 2026 in “What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?”

“The great thing about The New York Times is that they send out young underpaid reporters”

MixedComment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Bais.News – News Neutralization Piepline”

“NYT has gotten so bloated both in actual content (long meandering interviews) as well as the encapsulating junk.”

CriticizesComment from 12 Jun 2026 in “The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML”

“The public good their journalists and editors do out weight the annoyance of those emails.”

RecommendsComment from 5 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“I have found it easy and useful to unsubscribe from specific various columnists and topics”

RecommendsComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“the value of good journalism vastly outweighs the crappy subscription practices”

MixedComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“I deeply respect NYT journalism and I hate with every fiber of my being their revenue-generation / subscription management tactics.”

MixedComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“Sending 5 marketing emails with no unsubscribe link is not "operating in good faith", that's a blatant CAN-SPAM violation”

CriticizesComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“NYT is doing great though. It's actually doing so well it's in danger of becoming a monopoly.”

RecommendsComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“the NYT has been a persistent peddler in American propaganda to the point that they arent willing to issue corrections”

CriticizesComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“But unsubscribe hell remains (or did in January this year).”

MixedComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“The fact that they have an online unsubscribe option that's only available for California users is seriously scummy.”

CriticizesComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“Dealing with the eventual cancelation was an absolute pain.”

MixedComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days.”

MixedComment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”

“NYTimes constantly deletes parts of Trump's comments or outright rephrases them in an attempt to make him seem smarter”

CriticizesComment from 19 May 2026 in “Disney Erased FiveThirtyEight”

“one of the most shameless shills of the Iraq War, laundering complete bullshit and lies”

MixedComment from 16 May 2026 in “NYT and Vaping: How to Lie by Saying Only True Things”

“they try to hide / cloister that work away even though the journalists themselves want to make it accessible”

MixedComment from 13 May 2026 in “Tell NYT, Atlantic, USA Today to Keep Wayback Machine”

“I've not seen them be unfairly biased or bend over backwards to cater to outside corporate interests just yet.”

RecommendsComment from 13 May 2026 in “Tell NYT, Atlantic, USA Today to Keep Wayback Machine”

“they certainly have an editorial bias/agenda on most topics”

MixedComment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto? My Quest to Unmask Bitcoin's Creator”

“Most of us would agree that the NYT has lost its way. That it's getting by on the fumes of integrity long gone.”

CriticizesComment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto? My Quest to Unmask Bitcoin's Creator”

“Covering up a good portion of the article and preventing me from scrolling until I click the tiny link to decline is hostile”

CriticizesComment from 6 Apr 2026 in “I Won't Download Your App. The Web Version Is A-OK”

“you'll still be informed about what matters but not manipulated so much that it gives you anxiety”

RecommendsComment from 6 Apr 2026 in “When Virality Is the Message: The New Age of AI Propaganda”

“I struggle to think how nytimes isn't a perfect fit for a site over an app.”

MixedComment from 6 Apr 2026 in “I Won't Download Your App. The Web Version Is A-OK”

“they even have a split reader mode to view both versions side by side”

RecommendsComment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Paralleltext.app – Learn Languages by Reading”

“Logged in to my subscriber account, the front page is 68MB and has a giant Hume band ad filling 1/3 of the screen.”

CriticizesComment from 19 Mar 2026 in “'Your Frustration Is the Product'”

“I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data.”

CriticizesComment from 19 Mar 2026 in “'Your Frustration Is the Product'”

“Kept trying to show me bullshit ads, The overall deterioration of the quality of the content especially the opinion section.”

CriticizesComment from 16 Mar 2026 in “The 49MB Web Page”

“The volume of tracking pixels and other ad non-sense is truly horrifying.”

MixedComment from 15 Mar 2026 in “The 49MB Web Page”

“It's hard for me to reconcile with the NYT after their role in 2002-2003 of building public consensus for the Iraq war”

CriticizesComment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: What are your go to sources for relatively unbiased global news?”

“We're more likely to get a breaking tech story out of CNBC, Reuters or NYT”

RecommendsComment from 3 Mar 2026 in “The Internet's Top Tech Publications Lost 58% of Their Google Traffic Since 2024”

“NYT is still among the best sources, despite their imperfections.”

MixedComment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Respectify – a comment moderator that teaches people to argue better”

“The Times is thriving because they've pivoted from being a newspaper to being a media business.”

RecommendsComment from 4 Feb 2026 in “How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post”

“I don’t find the New York Times to be of much use either — their view from nowhere approach serves to normalize extremism”

CriticizesComment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Washington Post Begins Layoffs”

“Legacy media offers information and a perspective that cannot be found everywhere else.”

MixedComment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Best Gas Masks”

“The NYT has problems with being a stooge of the military-industrial complex”

MixedComment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy”

“Fortunately or unfortunately, the New York Times is now a gaming/recipes company with a newspaper attached to it.”

MixedComment from 11 Nov 2025 in “Neros has raised $121M to build military drones”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.