by James Wallace Harris, 6/30/25
We all know the internet is full of crappy information. The creators of the Internet intended it to be an information utopia. They wanted information to be free and instantly available. It turns out free information is only worth what you paid for it.
The Internet destroyed the local paper and investigative journalism. Quality magazine journalism is circling the drain. Television news is more abundant than ever, but it’s so predigested and targeted to specific audiences that it’s worthless.
Most of the high-quality sources of information are behind paywalls. Every morning, I get up and listen to Apple News+ narrators reading articles from quality magazines as I do my physical therapy exercises. Usually, that’s one thirty-minute article. Unlike podcasts, magazine journalism features a greater percentage of useful information per minute. I truly despise the kind of podcasts that spend more time on the host’s personality than the topic promised in the thumbnail.
Apple News+ gives me access to over 400 magazines and newspapers. This is the bargain of the century for $12.99 a month. However, it’s doubtful these magazines earn enough money from this service to keep them going. The real way to support them is to subscribe to each periodical. Apple News+ is like Spotify, good for the consumer, bad for the creator. The ethical way to use Spotify is to locate albums you want to buy. And the ethical way to use Apple News+ is to find the journals you should subscribe to.
I know these periodicals have become expensive. The Atlantic is $79.99 for a digital subscription. The New Yorker is $130 for a digital subscription. Why pay those prices when I already get the content in Apple News+? Especially when I will consume the content via Apple News+.
The answer is support. Think of quality journalism as an important charity. However, there is another reason. When I read a great article, I want to share it with my friends. Apple News+ is so locked down that it’s not possible. You can only share with other Apple News+ subscribers. You can’t even cut and paste from the screen.
Many periodicals that publish on the web can be copied to an email or printed as a PDF and shared. However, even those methods of getting around the paywall might disappear.
I often read articles that I know friends would also want to read. Some paywalled publications do allow for limited sharing. It should be a standard feature.
We need to move away from the shitty free content. Sharing is prevalent on the Internet, but consider the type of content people share. It’s mostly mindless entertainment or opinions. We need to learn to distinguish between well-researched articles and endless unfounded opinions.
The easiest way for me to share content is if my friends subscribe to Apple News+. And if more people subscribed, the publications would get more money.
We live in an age where authority is suspect. Everyone wants their views to dominate, and will rationalize their beliefs with any content that supports those views. We have lost the ability to evaluate what is real.
The trouble is reality can’t be understood with sound bites. Any topic worth considering requires significant study and research. TV and podcasts create content too quickly. Their information is presented too soon after events and produced too fast. Long-form journalism explores ideas in depth, and that takes time.
It also takes time to read such content. We’ve trained our minds to consume content quickly that was created quickly. Start paying attention to the information you consume and think about how it was produced. If you’re listening to a podcast that lasts an hour, note how much actual useful information you gleaned from that hour. If you get your news from television, pay attention to how long each news segment lasts. Think about how that news was gathered and why. And pay particular attention to the personalities presenting the news on TV and podcasts. Is it more about them or the content?
The highest quality content is nonfiction books written by well-educated researchers. However, it’s not possible to read enough nonfiction books to keep up with everything we need to know. I believe the best compromise for consuming high-quality information is long-form journalism.
You will be far better educated if you spend one hour a day on one subject than one hour a day on twenty different five-minute topics. This is where a service like Apple News+ succeeds. And it does have competitors, such as Zinio. My library offers a selection of free digital magazines and newspapers through Libby.
JWH
Auxiliary Memory 
I enjoyed your thoughts on this matter.
I just recently discovered my library gives me Pressreader for free and I get the online print edition of the NYT with that. I listen to the articles through the app. I was paying $20 a month for the online print edition because that’s the way I prefer to read papers, now my library gives it for free! I listen to articles rather than read if I read the whole article. I’ll read to skim the articles I’m only partly interested in.
My daughter makes me subscribe to Kindle ultimated and that gives me some of the more expensive magazines which I listen too. Plus my library is super duper good on its libby magazine selection.
I get the WSJ print edition for $4 a month. I listen to the articles that way on Ipad. I use IOS for reader since better than app’s built-in reader. I prefer the print edition on line and don’t like digital only in app versions.
Does the Apple News plus give the WSJ print edition version? Does it give the complete version in that app?
My library and Kindle give me most of what apple news has (I think).
Apple News+ does present content from The Wall Street Journal but I don’t know how complete. I’ve never seen anything with stocks or commodities but then I don’t read the paper edition and know if they are in it either.