My paid media diet needs Ozempic

If you’re like me - and I pray to our Lord and Savior that you are not - you consume a lot of media, some of it good (Love Is Blind), some of it bad (New York Times headlines) and some of it very, very bad (podcasts where white ladies giggle about desperately sad homicides - j/k I can’t listen to that). Anyway, I’m trying to get a handle on what I pay for and what I need to cut down on and so I’m gonna think this through in this public forum so you can jeer at it and hopefully tell me to stop.

STUFF I PAY FOR

 New York Times + The Athletic ($4/month) - I think I did this originally just for The Athletic and then it got bundled with the NYT. I’ve cancelled my NYT sub so many times it’s fair to call it a situationship now. Look, if I cancelled every time Bret Stephens wrote a dumb column I’d do nothing else every day. Now they’re scared of me and lower my rate every time I cancel. I feel ok with this now.

Washington Post ($2/month) - I’m cancelling this one. Fuck Jeff Bezos.

Rolling Stone ($7.99/month) - They have some good articles! But I also I had to subscribe when I did my project where I listened to the Top 500 Albums and wrote about every single one and I just kept it going.

The Atlantic ($50/year) - I’m torn on this one because they publish Adam Serwer, a vital writer on current politics (he coined “The cruelty is the point,” maybe you’ve heard that) AND Thomas Chatterton Williams, a blowhard who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room but is friends with Bari Weiss, need I say more.

The Week Jr. ($98/year) - It’s for me kid, she loves it. It’s like a weekly news/art/ entertainment magazine for kids, so there’ll be a story about whatever is happening in the news that week AND a cookie recipe at the back. Plus games. She reads it at breakfast every day.

Wikipedia ($3/month) - Everybody should set up a montly recurring payment to Wikimedia, just because it’s one of the only major unbiased outlets that rich people can’t buy and that’s why THEY HATE IT.

The Onion ($15/month) - That’s a lot, but you get a paper copy mailed to your house, which is cool. We all love the Onion but that might be too much. May have to revisit that one.

Defector ($8/month) - Mostly sports, with some politics and cultural commentary. But come on, it’s worth it just for David Roth and Drew Magary, two whip-smart, hilarious observers of the human condition. And the NFL.

Flaming Hydra ($3/month) - I signed up when it launched and I’ve never looked at it again.

SF Standard ($9/month) - Even though it’s owned by a secretive billionaire, the SF Standard is doing some great local reporting. This piece, just from last week, about a bunch of rich kids who forced an entire longstanding apartment community out of their homes, was really well-done and thoughtful, I thought. The buyers come across pretty badly, but the real enemy is SF’s continual and ongoing failure to allow people to build housing.

Mission Local ($50/year) - It’s technically free, but I throw them $50 a year to support the excellent local journalism they do. Not just confined to the Mission, they dig up a lot of shit that other local media ignores. Plus they have local treasure Joe Eskenazi.

Lindsey Adler’s Substack ($7/month) - I’ve always been a big fan of Lindsey’s writing as she moved from place to place, but she’s now left baseball behind and is writing intensely personal, really well-done essays about whatever grabs her attention. Worth a look.

Wondery+ podcasts ($5.99/month) - I signed up originally to get complete access to Patrick Wyman’s fantastic history podcast Tides of History, but there’s a lot of good stuff on here.

The Binge+ podcasts ($4.99/month) - I think I first signed up for this to hear all of The Emerald Triangle, a true crime about a murder on a pot farm in Mendocino County, but there’s also a truly bonkers story called Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen, which is kind of a silly name, I know, bu the story itself is WILD.

Spotify ($14.99/month for the family plan) - Spotify is evil, I know, and rips off artists, I know. This is where all my playlists (and my family’s playlists) are, though, and switching seems like a nightmare. Maybe someday.

Cable TV (like $280/month) - The biggest single media expense I have. I guess I could look at bundling and shit but I’m afraid it’s all gonna add up to the same. My wife is a part-time television critic so we watch a lot of TV and I need my sports channels and my Bravo and Peacock and God knows what else. I know it’s a shitload of money but I’m too lazy to do anything about it.

COMING NEXT WEEK - My free media diet (i.e., shit I read online and don’t pay for).