Been an ARRL member and a RAC member since I became a ham 3 years ago.
I am a member basically only for ARRL's QST magazine. It's a lot more interesting than RAC's Canadian Amateur magazine. As a relatively new ham, I like reading about all the different sub-sets of the hobby.
And ham radio is such a multi-facetted hobby that it is difficult to satisfy all the cats in the herd. I think QST generally does a good job because it's got at least one article for pretty much every niche in every issue.
As an operator, I am 90% POTA so all the articles on DXpeditions and (fill-in-the-blank)-OTA are of interest to me. I like old tech, so the reprints of the old magazine pages are great, as are the articles on "classic" equipment that I can only drool and dream over. And I'm not that old, for a ham (57). I find the circuits of that era easier to understand than the modern stuff (I do not have an electronics background).
Contesting, on the other hand, doesn't thrill me, but others seem to like it. The modern tech reviews and modern electronics articles whizz over my head, but the folks with an electronics tech background seem to eat it up. Antenna building is well within my skill range, so I like those articles as well.
To each his own--and it's a difficult balance to please everyone in one magazine.
I've never read any of the online magazines, and probably would never do so. They are so awkward to navigate. I like keeping a paper copy of QST on the back of the toilet, as that is my preferred reading spot!
I'm OK with the fee increase. Honestly, the QST magazine is good enough to be worth it IMHO.
That all being said, the ARRL has other roles. It is also supposed to represent the interests of hams at the FCC and ITU, so I flipped them an extra $50 for "spectrum defence" which I think is an honourable cause.
The EMCOMM stuff has never turned my crank so I don't read a lot about it. But I think at this point ham radio for EMCOMM purposes is a solution in search of a problem. Our local ARES group folded in this neck of the woods some years ago, long before I got into the hobby. They real emergency groups just don't need hams milling about.
On the other hand, there could be a role for hams at a more local level. We had a major power outage a year ago, and by instict a bunch of us hopped onto the repeater and were sharing tips of which gas stations still were pumping and which major intersections had the lights restored. It happened kinda randomly, but was useful. I can see a realistic role for ham radio clubs to do something like that more formally, even if just amongst themselves. Not a "public safety" service, but more like a "community helper" service.
