Popular curation is awful, you're right. But it remains unfortunate that old media still bundles their curation and authoring services. I'd like to see expert curation applied to the entirety of news articles.
I'd understand the resistance if you were constantly having to authorize and approve these charges, but really you just sign up and forget about it. I use the subscriptions at least as much as I use Netflix. I am sort of kicking myself for not having set this up earlier.
I can't find the New York Times on Amazon, though. I pay $7.50/mo for a digital subscription directly to the Times. A pretty great deal, if you ask me. They run a sale every week or two.
WaPo bundles authorship and curation, which is exactly the problem I'm describing. The problem isn't cost, it's incompleteness.