I would pay for NYT but their unsubscription process has traditionally been notoriously and unnecessarily difficult. I have a personal moral objection to giving money to any company that makes it more difficult to stop giving them money than to start.
Yes, there have also been major factual blunders, but for the vast majority of information they seem to genuinely try and deliver vetted facts.
Ah, the NYT that helped justify the US invasion of Iraq based on falsehoods? That NYT?
Edit: Explanation - the "I subscribe to the NYT" as a pat response to funding news sources puts far too much power in the NYT's hands, and they've proven to be less than trustworthy in the past.
I can't say if the NYT are villains or not, but if they are, you might have better luck convincing people if your only data point wasn't from literally decades ago
In defense of that point - it is probably fair to blame that missreporting for thousands of deaths - not all the deaths of the Iraq War, but a big chunk of them. Don't forget that contemporarily you had an immense amount of well founded skepticism about the true cause of the war which turned out to be quite accurate in retrospect but was decried as unpatriotic at the time. The Iraq War is the first time I personally experience news comedy being a more reliable source than traditional media.
In defense of the NYT, vetting sources is hard and they publish a whole lot of good content.
Too bad the consequences of that "data point" are still so profound that people are still dying daily in that region directly because of that war. When do you think we can just forget about the kind of war mongering the NYT pushed ?
Has the NYT changed anything concretely since then? Because going by the way they still seem completely addicted to "anonymous sources in the intelligence community" it sure doesn't seem like they have learnt their lesson.
I don't want to pay a subscription, I want to pay for content I actually consume. I hate that paywalls incentivize to write clickbait even more than ads do. I hate opinion pieces pretending to be something else. I hate paying for copy-pasted texts from news agencies or press releases. But as with TV, you have to pay in bulk and if the good content is sold separately it's extremely expensive.
The NYT is my main source of news, but I'd strongly discourage everyone from actually financially supporting it - much as I'd strongly discourage everyone from actually financially supporting Fox or CNN.
The truth is the NYT is a heavily biased, establishment bootlicking far-left progressivism propogating propaganda machine. They will do whatever it takes to present the opposing view as racist, supremacist, sexist, anti-semetic, anti-gay, and bigoted, while anything far worse but on "their side" is handled with kid gloves. Trump sneezed? Well that's racist, plus he wants you to drink bleach, literally, so we're going to cover that heavily for the next week. Something bad happened? It's Actually Trump's Fault. Here's Why. Trump was totally going to destroy America, except, well, that didn't actually happen, at all, but they're still trying to push that narrative.
Biden bungled Afghanistan, gas prices and inflation is through the roof, Putin invaded Ukraine under his watch, Biden very prematurely declared "independence from the virus" a year ago (!!!), Biden flip flops almost as much as Trump, has more deaths under his belt from COVID than Trump... everything is swept under the rug, a passing mention in all but the most egregious examples, and even then they treat him gently. I recently read an opinion column from a long-standing columnist there basically telling us how we should all support Biden because he just, like, has a really tough job, you know, and would you even wish such an important and consequential job on your worst enemy?
The NYT needs help for sure, but not financially, unfortunately.
Yes, there have also been major factual blunders, but for the vast majority of information they seem to genuinely try and deliver vetted facts.