It is also questionable whether the newsroom @ NYT, WSJ give much quality to begin with.

That being said, there is value depending on what topics you're interested in. The value of NYT for me is the Arts & culture section. But I'd happily pay for Matt Stoller's content,Taibbi, Siskin or Gwern if he had one.

There is risk that's been highlighted of creating bubbles but seeing how news media has reinvented itself over the last decade, I can't see how that can be avoided, except this bubble is self-curated and more specific, which one can argue is better.

[Edit: clarification on last line]