But you don't even need to be a member of the New York public library system. You can often read teasers (in practice, about 25% of the magazine) for free at various magazines' websites. My favorite such site is the Economist which puts up a "freeforall" section that contains the political and business news of the week, along with a selection of their articles. In an effort to entice you, they grey out the titles of the articles you need to pay to read. Only they don't count on cheapos like me. (Or else, they do and folks like me are a statistical minority.) If the greyed-out titles are interesting, I make my way to the public library or the university one (sometimes even the local bookstore) and read the articles. The website has yet to entice me to actually buy the Economist.
Same goes for the NY Times whose opinion and editorial pages I read religiously (and for free) everyday. I don't see why I should part with a dollar to obtain the same information that I get on the web for free. Besides, (hypocrisy alert!) I would like to save a few trees. I often wonder when the nice folks that run these newspapers will catch on.
