Apple News+
Everyone should look into (and subscribe to) Apple’s new subscription service for news. It’s called Apple News+, and it’s only $9.99/month. That price offers complete access for everyone in your family to the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, and over 300 magazines (including People, National Geographic, Time, Forbes, ESPN, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Field & Stream, and tons of other well known publications that people care about). You can start with a one month free trial.
A lot of people see this as just another way for Apple to milk customers for money, and they announced a lot of services at their March 2019 event that seem that way, but I really think this is the most important thing they announced. There is no similar service to this on the market today. It comes at a really crucial time when people are using the Internet to try and keep themselves informed about the world, but don’t realize that what they’re being sold as news, is really only repackaged hype intended to drive further engagement with the platform serving it up (see: Facebook) for the purpose of boosting ad revenue through ever increasing volumes of clicks, likes, comments, and shares.
Companies like this don’t care that the articles people are sharing on their platforms are often devoid of actual facts and usually have no legitimate sources for the “information” they present. Because of social media’s tendency to prioritize monetization over the truth and journalistic integrity, people in the US and in the world are being driven further and further to each end of the political spectrum, and people are becoming significantly less tolerant of people who have beliefs only slightly different than their own. And in more extreme cases, we’re seeing foreign and domestic terror groups pop up that exist to incite violence and spread hatred, and in many cases they attribute the sources that lead to their indoctrination to misinformation campaigns and sensational headlines that were fed to them by Facebook, YouTube, and other companies. I mean, literal NAZIS are making a comeback, for god’s sake.
In addition to their commitment to journalistic integrity, Apple has made their news platform secure, so that you know from a privacy standpoint you’re getting the best of the best, and that the headlines you read won’t follow you across the Internet for advertisers to use to target you based on your interests or beliefs.