I used to read about 25 or so online news publications each week. A bit more on a monthly basis. I had paid subscriptions to a handful of publications (8-9?),

I used to read about 25 or so online news publications each week. A bit more on a monthly basis. I had paid subscriptions to a handful of publications (8-9?), spending more money on these subscriptions than I had ever done for paper newspapers and magazines in the past. Over the past 3-4 years I have ditched most newspapers and I have dropped most subscriptions. For three main reasons: - Both advertising content and the newspapers advertising themselves has gotten really annoying. No, I don't appreciate you throwing modal windows at me. No I'm not going to subscribe to your newsletter. No I don't appreciate having to click away a second or third modal window. - Advertising masquerading as content. Sure, it is marked as "sponsored content", but every effort is made to hide that fact. This is dishonest. - I don't gain anything from reading most of these publications. They don't make me smarter and I don't remember what I read one week later. The bulk of news articles are written by uninformed people incapable of useful analysis. Important news is widely disseminated anyway so I won't miss anything. When the ads are more important than the content, I won't burden them with my page views. It isn't for me. In the process I found that I had been spending too much time reading news. Limiting my news intake to just a few news sources (3-4) whose biases I understand, and at least which I can try to adjust for, is enough. The number of books I've consumed per year has had a sharp uptick since I stopped reading as many news websites.