I really enjoyed Blendle for a while, but I found that I frequently ended up paying for articles on the Blendle platform that I could have accessed for free from the publisher.
But this is another layer of intermediation without value add - these people are basically journalist taxing, and isn't this another place where smart folks are effectively deciding what other people want to read?
Thanks for the link! I just signed up requesting a beta invite. $0.25 per article, with an instant refund sounds fair. I have wanted access to The Economist, etc., but not enough for a full subscription.
The Economist is the only news organ I have consistently found to be worth subscribing to, despite its faults. The stuff in it that you think you're not interested in is almost invariably worth knowing about.
I had a subscription to the Economist for years and was reader for much longer, but the content has gotten much worse and they insist on displaying video ads right in the middle of articles even if you pay for a subscription.
I feel the content has become less evidence based, less thorough, less anlytic, less principled and less hard hitting than it used to be. There's more purely anecdotal/cultural stuff that I can get anywhere.
They used to ask important questions, investigate them thoroughly and then make the case for a particular conclusion. You could agree or disagree, but now it's often just an exercise in careful fence sitting, in "being sensible", even on matters where taking a principled stand is the obvious thing to do.
That said, I'm not entirely certain if it's me who has changed or The Economist or both.
IMHO the Economist has the best iPad app for reading longer news/analysis content I have come across. The simplicity of the navigation and the non-nonsens approach to article viewing is just very good. I don't get why others can't do the same.
