20 years ago, I was a regular subscriber to Barron's. I liked the weekly roundup of stock market info better than the daily WSJ (which when I subscribed to the WSJ stacked up unread). In the fall of 2017, I re-subscribed to Barron's on one of their $52 for 52 weeks offers, and cancelled in August 2018. In that time, I regularly read the outside section of the news weekly - especially the "Up and Down Wall Street" column which usually contained interesting insights into what had happened in the past week, or interesting topics that were on-tap for the coming week. [aside: the center section is titled 'Market Week', and lists stocks, their prices at start and end of week, and a few columns. I almost always discarded this section un-read. In the 1990's, getting stock quotes from a newspaper / magazine was still reasonable, but today anyone can look up anything on-line, so the 'Market Week' section seems out of date, and out of touch]
They've added columns, and added an on-line edition that has more articles, and the ability to read 'latest print edition' articles on-line.
But overall I realized the content was formatted as essentially the same stodgy old newsweekly from the 1990's. I watched eagerly for articles on FIRE... didn't see any. I looked for advice on increasing savings, and investing for the future... they didn't cover the saving aspect, but pounded the 'invest' drum quite a lot. Of course they wanted to crow about the 'Barrons picks' for the year, and covered the returns of their portfolios if you had bought when they recommended it. But on paper it would have involved a LOT of trading, and VTSAX seemed a safer and easier investment. I watched eagerly for recommendations to invest in Vanguard funds... surprisingly many of their articles listed Vanguard funds in their winners categories. But only their articles on Jack Bogle mentioned Vanguard's "owned by investors" aspect.
My final impression was that Barron's just don't "get" FIRE. And I'm convinced that readers under 60 are not their target demographic audience. They're targeting older retirees in their 60's, 70's and 80's who want to keep a 'finger on the pulse of the market' without having to drink from the CNBC or WSJ firehose of market data. American Ex-Pats are highly represented among their readers, but I think many of THEM realize they can get good market analysis via other venues (such as Morningstar).
And since Barron's doesn't understand the principles of FIRE, they're not likely to report on it in any way shape or form that would seem reasonable to those of us who have tried the old stodgy investing methodologies, and found them wanting. When I cancelled my subscription, I was tempted to write an email missive to their editor to give voice to these sentiments as a *long time subscriber*, but realized such a message would probably end up in the circular file, and so... I saved my comments for YOU, you fine mustachians! All the best! MFB