I have a subscription to Wired.  I didn’t pay for it, it came with something that I purchased.  Don’t even remember what it was anymore – but it’s almost up.  I received a renewal offer in the mail the other day and thought about it – was it interesting enough to spend the ten or twelve dollars for a year’s subscription on?  Comparing that to the effort to read it, the quality of articles, the disposal…

So the renewal letter went in to the recycle bin.

I have to admit, I’ve lost my love for Wired.  There have been a few things that I’ve liked – some of the articles were decent (although much of it feels like trendy pop-tech-science to me), the photoshopped “things in the future” and the “what’s really in this product” features are neat – both from a creative and informative standpoint.  Some of the trend analysis and informational articles are genuinely useful.

But then I read articles like the one that ultimately spawned yesterday’s post.  Here it is, read it here.  I am, of course, only speaking for myself and this is all my opinion, but really – is that rubbish the quality that I should expect from Wired?  Yeah, it’s one guy’s opinion (“if you don’t want images stolen, don’t put them on the web”, his self-centered gripe about Flickr comments, wide-angle vertical shots), but it leaves me with the same taste in my mouth that I get when reading the magazine.

Further, it’s obvious that the recession has taken a toll on them.  Their quality is down this year, and has (in my opinion) been going down for about three years.  It’s more… I dunno, mainstream?  As such, they’ve lost much of their appeal.

So that’s it.  I’ve already made my goal for 2010: fewer magazines, and only the higher quality ones.  I’d rather pay extra for better quality.