I suspect that most people, like me, don't want to be "nickel and dimed" for their news. There are very few articles that I want to read bad enough to pay $1 for. Almost as few for $.50.
For $50/yr, that means I could read 1 NYT article per week, or I could have the yearly subscription. If I care about that newspaper at all, the subscription makes a lot more sense.
The others are more like 2/wk instead, but still, if I'm only reading 2 articles per week from them, that seems really low.
But even if the price per article made economic sense, there's psychology to worry about. I can't find them at the moment, but I've read articles detailing that people will pick the 'unlimited' option over the cheaper per-piece option even when they know they'd pay less in the long run on the per-piece.
So while you might prefer to buy each article, that's generally not how people work.
For $50/yr, that means I could read 1 NYT article per week, or I could have the yearly subscription. If I care about that newspaper at all, the subscription makes a lot more sense.
The others are more like 2/wk instead, but still, if I'm only reading 2 articles per week from them, that seems really low.
But even if the price per article made economic sense, there's psychology to worry about. I can't find them at the moment, but I've read articles detailing that people will pick the 'unlimited' option over the cheaper per-piece option even when they know they'd pay less in the long run on the per-piece.
So while you might prefer to buy each article, that's generally not how people work.