> I don't want to shell out $20/mo for, say, the Economist right now but if there was a particular article I wanted to read I'd probably pay a few bucks.
The Economist is one of the few news sources worth paying for.
Every week, there's a tour of the world's major events, by region. There will also be an in-depth article on one country (how's Rwanda getting along?), an in-depth article on one industry (what's the situation with bauxite supply?) and maybe a section on some technology (water desalination, who's doing it?) Over a year, most of the world and most of the industries are covered. Read the Economist for a year and you get a sense of how the world works.
The target audience is the movers and shakers of the world. Look at the employment ads.
There's a general pro-capitalism bias, but it's British-European, not US-oriented.
I love their writing, but I hate their subscriptions. The only way to cancel is to talk to customer service via chat or phone, who will keep begging and insisting that you not cancel and offering discounts to try to stop you. When I finally did manage to cancel, it required at least half an hour of insisting to some salesman.
I originally planned to just take a break, but after that distasteful cancellation procedure, I didn’t feel like resubscribing.
The Economist regularly goes on sale at discountmags.com. For years it was $1/week, but recently the price increased to $75/yr. It's not on sale at the moment, but for anyone interested, I recommend setting up a deal alert at slick deals [1] to get notified the next time it's on sale - probably around Black Friday / Christmas.
I have been subscribing to the Economist through DiscountMags for over a decade now, and consider DiscountMags to be a totally legitimate business. DiscountMags does automatically enroll you for their "DiscountLock" auto-renewal when you place an order, but you can turn it off at any time through their website without talking to anyone (and I would recommend turning off DiscountLock as it no longer locks in the original price like it used to... so better to just re-up during a sale period).
[1] https://slickdeals.net/f/18290980-the-economist-magazine-1-y...
For what it’s worth, they offer subs via IAP in the iOS App Store. If you subscribe that way, unsubscribing is just a couple of taps.
That €349 per year is pretty steep, though.
I sent them an email to unsubscribe one time to take a break too, though I'm European that was many years ago. I hope it didn't get worse.
Yeah, it's good. I just find it expensive to pay for regularly.