For a long time, I resisted subscribing to news services. After all, pretty much all the news was available somewhere for free…
For years, my go-to news hub was CNN. I still check it more often than any other news site. In the past year or two, though, CNN has gone from unlimited access to a limited number of stories per day before the dreaded “subscription popup” appears. I decided that rather than support a large mainstream media outlet, I subscribed to my local metro newspaper (The Oregonian/OregonLive), The Atlantic, and Oregon Capital Chronicle.
I did, however, subscribe to several free newsletters from the New York Times (Breaking News and The Morning). The Breaking News letter was a cue to go look elsewhere for more on a story, as the link always lead to a subscriber-only story. The Morning would provide several stories and links to other stories. In June 2026, I got an NYT Editor’s Picks email with the title “Tina Fey Cooks Only 3 Things, and This Soup Is One”, with a link to a story. I clicked it, because I wanted to find out about this soup recipe. The story did have a link to the recipe, but (of course), I had to at least sign up for a 7-day free trial of NYT Cooking to get access to the ACTUAL RECIPE. I decided it was worth a try, and the recipe was a success.
I decided that I wanted to keep using the NYT Cooking recipes, but I did not like the price. I then remembered that I had gotten a “all-access” email for $1/week from NYT just before I cancelled my trial. I saw in my inbox that the NYT regularly (at least once a month) sent me this offer. Based on that, I was resolved to wait for that offer before subscribing. The first offer I got was for a half year at $1/week and access for four people. I decided to wait until the full-year offer, and that email arrived this weekend – HAH! I signed up at the rate I wanted – yeah!