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%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- 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” - Comment from 26 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Respectify – a comment moderator that teaches people to argue better”
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” - Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Washington Post Begins Layoffs”
- Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”
- Comment from 3 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: What are your go to sources for relatively unbiased global news?”
- Comment from 19 May 2026 in “Disney Erased FiveThirtyEight”
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” - Comment from 6 Apr 2026 in “I Won't Download Your App. The Web Version Is A-OK”
- Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “'Your Frustration Is the Product'”
- Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML”
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” - Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”
- Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “The desperation of NYTimes”
- 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” - Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Who Is Satoshi Nakamoto? My Quest to Unmask Bitcoin's Creator”
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.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Economist | 87 | 75 | 54% | 12 | 10 yrs11 owners | — |
| New York Times subscriptionThis page | 68 | 190 | 26% | 12 | 10 yrs8 owners | — |
| LWN.net subscription | 53 | 14 | 79% | 11 | 22 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| Quanta Magazine | 36 | 20 | 64% | 11 | — | — |
| Apple News | 29 | 83 | 26% | 7 | — | — |
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.”
“It was awesome. Comics, international, regional beats, magazines.”
“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.”
“I pay for the NYT - in part, because they do so many "digital" things right compared to other newspapers”
“It was great: delivered each morning, no waste paper by the afternoon, a simple subscription, etc.”
“The great thing about The New York Times is that they send out young underpaid reporters”
“NYT has gotten so bloated both in actual content (long meandering interviews) as well as the encapsulating junk.”
“The public good their journalists and editors do out weight the annoyance of those emails.”
“I have found it easy and useful to unsubscribe from specific various columnists and topics”
“the value of good journalism vastly outweighs the crappy subscription practices”
“I deeply respect NYT journalism and I hate with every fiber of my being their revenue-generation / subscription management tactics.”
“Sending 5 marketing emails with no unsubscribe link is not "operating in good faith", that's a blatant CAN-SPAM violation”
“NYT is doing great though. It's actually doing so well it's in danger of becoming a monopoly.”
“the NYT has been a persistent peddler in American propaganda to the point that they arent willing to issue corrections”
“But unsubscribe hell remains (or did in January this year).”
“The fact that they have an online unsubscribe option that's only available for California users is seriously scummy.”
“Dealing with the eventual cancelation was an absolute pain.”
“One caveat is the subscription "rental" is for only a 3 day period, so you have "renew" your subscription every 3 days.”
“NYTimes constantly deletes parts of Trump's comments or outright rephrases them in an attempt to make him seem smarter”
“one of the most shameless shills of the Iraq War, laundering complete bullshit and lies”
“they try to hide / cloister that work away even though the journalists themselves want to make it accessible”
“I've not seen them be unfairly biased or bend over backwards to cater to outside corporate interests just yet.”
“they certainly have an editorial bias/agenda on most topics”
“Most of us would agree that the NYT has lost its way. That it's getting by on the fumes of integrity long gone.”
“Covering up a good portion of the article and preventing me from scrolling until I click the tiny link to decline is hostile”
“you'll still be informed about what matters but not manipulated so much that it gives you anxiety”
“I struggle to think how nytimes isn't a perfect fit for a site over an app.”
“they even have a split reader mode to view both versions side by side”
“Logged in to my subscriber account, the front page is 68MB and has a giant Hume band ad filling 1/3 of the screen.”
“I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data.”
“Kept trying to show me bullshit ads, The overall deterioration of the quality of the content especially the opinion section.”
“The volume of tracking pixels and other ad non-sense is truly horrifying.”
“It's hard for me to reconcile with the NYT after their role in 2002-2003 of building public consensus for the Iraq war”
“We're more likely to get a breaking tech story out of CNBC, Reuters or NYT”
“NYT is still among the best sources, despite their imperfections.”
“The Times is thriving because they've pivoted from being a newspaper to being a media business.”
“I don’t find the New York Times to be of much use either — their view from nowhere approach serves to normalize extremism”
“Legacy media offers information and a perspective that cannot be found everywhere else.”
“The NYT has problems with being a stooge of the military-industrial complex”
“Fortunately or unfortunately, the New York Times is now a gaming/recipes company with a newspaper attached to it.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.