Resubscribing to The New Yorker

Sometime last year, I subscribed to The New Yorker, taking advantage of the 3 month subscription promotion for only $1 an issue for 12 issues. It was a good deal and I had not only access to the latest issue of the magazine, but also it’s archive. I loved The New Yorker. Its long form writing on most topics from science, medicine, and various social issues happening around the world is a great read. And contemporary topics covered around the world on various issues allowed me to keep somewhat up to date with what is happening around the world with a little more depth to the topic in question. While it is a weekly magazine with a few long form articles covering certain topics, it does not have the breadth of topics nor the lightning fast reporting found in other news agencies like CNN, BBC or the International New York Times. What it lacks in breadth, it makes it up for depth.

It is rare (for me) to actually enjoy the kinds of writing found in The New Yorker. Topics and subjects covered in their articles are fairly easy to understand (except for American politics which is usually skip) and quite engaging, mainly because it really delves deep into the subject matter, with excellent writing, top notch fact finding and verification, such that articles within The New Yorker are written as a story to be told, rather than facts to be reported. In almost all articles, there is always a human side to it, rather than reporting just the facts and ‘he said she said’ perspective. Investigative journalism are among my favourite kind of journalistic writing and it is abundantly found in The New Yorker.

I took advantage of the promotion but never continued my subscription ($59.90 for a year). Partly because I didn’t allocated time within the week to actually sit down and read he articles within The New Yorker. And soon, I found that I began to lag behind as more issues are released on a weekly basis. Very soon, I felt that, the more I lag behind, the more reluctant become in catching up and actually setting aside time to read those articles that I missed.

Fast forward to 2 months ago, I actually committed myself to continuing my subscription for an entire year. One of the main reason I decided to do that was because I finally bought an iPad mini 4 two month prior. Now I can read my favourite books, (Kindle), keep up to date on the news (CNN, BBC, The International New York Times) and finally have time and the platform to dedicate myself to reading The New Yorker. By using the iPad app, new issues are downloaded automatically and the magazine is formatted beautifully on the iPad Mini such that it makes reading the magazine a joy (just try the National Geographic Magazine app, it’s wonderfully formatted for tablets and it’s fully interactive). And with the iPad Mini, I can read while commuting, which is a boon, since now I can truly read my favourite books, comics, and magazines. The time spent commuting (45 minutes each way) can now be spent on reading. You have no idea how much that means to me when I finally got the iPad Mini.

So now, I am a happy subscriber to the magazine and will continue to do so, as long as those articles in the magazine continues to captivate me.