I’m a longtime New Yorker lover myself. I think there is some truth to this though: https://open.substack.com/pub/persuasion1/p/how-the-new-york...
For anyone with Apple News+ or Apple One subscriptions, The New Yorker is included:
If you have a library card with Libby access, you can get digital issues for free
I subscribe, but stare right through ads, unnoticing. Do they really not have that margin ad for berets anymore?
Did this change? I stopped reading the print version for lack of time a few years back, and there was definitely some full-page and margin advertising throughout the paper. I recall some of it being clearly directed at much wealthier customers than I was.
The placements and counts tends to vary issue to issue, but in general is much lower volume than many publications. But agreed, the ads do tend to be almost comically high end (for me)
I could never get into the New Yorker. It has always felt to me like every piece is deliberately drawn out. They take you to the precipice of something interesting only to pull back into an origin story, over and over again. I think it's the opposite of good writing: bloated, conceited, style over substance. It's not even meandering, it's just teasing. I'm sure it earned its place at the table long ago but the only part of it I can enjoy are the cartoons.
My biggest reading pleasure used to be the LRB but it was infected with the politics virus years ago. It used to be a place to learn minutiae through wonderful language and now it feels mostly like virtue signalling. I don't know where the best writing is these days but it sure as shit doesn't feel like it's in major print.
I see why people like it, but personally, I find their brand of longer form journalism extremely tiresome. Most often I read articles because I want to know the facts, and not just for the pleasure of reading for its own sake. Ponderous and meandering details of how the journalist interviewed so-and-so at such and such location and what the journalist thought about the food and the ambience and all of that just makes me furiously angry at what a waste of time it feels like. I just want to know the facts. I feel like AI is a godsend for impatient people like me who just want instant information And I have no interest in what a cool experience the journalist had or particular details of how they got paid or who they borrowed money from while they were writing.
I feel a similar way when I read Lunch with the Financial Times, which I used to love and now find tedious, partly because of the interviewer's snarky attitude and partly because they rarely, if ever, get to the point.
The idea is/was excellent, but the recent execution lacks seriousness. Excessive sarcasm and snark, especially in print, often come across as bitterness to my eyes.
I’d highly encourage anyone who loves great writing to subscribe.