How The Economist covers the world
medium.economist.com
medium.economist.com
* A stated point of view
* A consistent, brief, often funny writing style
* An always interesting mix of big-picture stories and smaller trend pieces
* Almost all of their content in audio form
* Pretty good tech products/reading experiences
They're also one of the few periodicals that, when I read about something I'm pretty knowledgeable about, doesn't fall flat.
Of all the major periodicals out there, it seems to me that they're one of the better positioned ones.
I want to know why the villains (people, corporations, governments) they attack justify their actions. Give me a soup of conflicting ideas to ponder instead of cherry picked truths.
If an author makes up my mind for me, I lose interest.
I would be a hypocrite if I didn't mention some good points about the magazine. The writing style is superb and this may sound strange but I find that my inner voice resonates with what I am reading. There are many writers yet the magazine as a whole is very coherent and humor is used expertly to liven up some dry topics.
So there you have it. Read it but don't forget that you're drinking their Kool-Aid.
It's as if they are ruling the world rather than doing journalism.
I completely understand that not everyone agrees with their views or likes this style of journalism, I just disagree that there's any "trick" or false advertising going on.
I can echo your comment: I was at a dinner party in London back in the mid 1980s and my host's gf worked for the EIU covering east Asia. She was an oxbridge graduate in her mid 20s. She said she couldn't understand why so many people in China, HK, SG etc seemed so anti-Japanese. That said a lot about the UK educational system!
But on the other hand the coverage is relatively broad and commentary relatively deep, and until recently, they assumed their readers were well read which saves a lot of time and gives a lot of depth. Plus I vastly prefer a weekly to daily (or even high frequency) "news" -- if it's still worth discussing a week later perhaps it's interesting. And it's typically unashamedly liberal, and hasn't lost the point of its founding 150 or so years ago, which was to argue for free trade.
I have read every issue since February of 1985 so yes, I am a loyal reader, despite my manifold criticism.
It'd also be a bit useless to tell readers of the Economist how great they are, and, as long as they can't get it printed in the NYT or similar, Medium probably is the best place to reach their potential market.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec...
The leaky paywall (and convenient scraped ePub versions for eReaders) makes it even easier to not contribute to funding quality journalism. If I could choose a dollar amount, I'd happily donate US$75/year recurring for what I'm currently paying $0/year for.
I managed to get unsubscribed by hurling abuse at their support staff, but I still think it should be considered fraud.
This paints you in a much worse light than them. I've cancelled with them twice. I called and said 'I would like to cancel' and they refunded me what was necessary. Took about 30 seconds - no abuse required.
I grant you the abuse might not have been necessary, but I wanted results and I wanted them yesterday.
I've never understood how they managed to cultivate the image they seem to have created.
Now, THIS is real reporting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14153346
For example, here's an article from 2011, titled "Print me a Stradivarius" [1]. If you were already familiar with 3D printing, the article might have struck you as elementary. But the vast majority of people don't work in tech, especially not in hardware tech. Such people almost certainly would not have heard of 3D printing in 2011, and learning about this would have been very valuable.
What I appreciate about the Economist is their restraint in covering current topics. A lot of their coverage is in-depth and subjects which _aren't_ topical. They aren't without flaws, but I've learnt a lot over the last decade by reading the Economist.
[1] - http://www.economist.com/node/18114327
Side note, the last time I criticised a pithy, poorly researched put down by you, I was told off by a moderator. I wonder if someone could defend this comment as somehow adding value to this discussion.
It's my opinion about the Economist, and especially about their coverage of world affairs (which I explicitly mention in my comment). And I've been quite familiar with the domain, having worked with people covering world affairs for over a decade or so (for print and radio).
I don't like their neoliberal mantra of privatisation and deregulation, and I don't find their British foreign policy biases to allow for much integrity.
You might not like my comment. That said, I don't see how holding grudges, and carrying older "pithy, poorly researched put downs" on your shoulders, trying to finally "get back" at another commenter is any good. I don't even remember our discussion. Perhaps you could have just stated your opinion on the subject, instead of your opinion on fellow HNers?
The "pithy, poorly researched put down" could just as well have been just a true (or reasonable), but unpopular opinion. As a European, I don't have the most favorable views, nor share many viewpoints with the American HN audience. I don't particularly care for the "free market" either or other such things many are hot for -- which is one of the reasons I find the Economist shallow.
It's probably easy to find statistics on their readership showing they're far more educated and international than average. But I'll use a slightly more fun way to show it: it's the only medium I know that regularly has classifieds in the back selling whole airports in Gambia, refineries in Vietnam, or inviting applications to be the UN's High Commissioner for Complicated Negotiations regarding Time Zones in littoral Antarctica.
That doesn't say much -- in fact the idea that these university degrees say anything of importance about the readership is totally contrary to how I view this, which would be much closer to the concept of the "intellectual yet idiot" (IYE) as proposed by Nassim Taleb (and similar ideas, put forward many more prominent thinkers through the last few centuries, e.g. the idea of the Philistine, or Flaubert's mockery of the educated middle class' "received ideas").
>But I'll use a slightly more fun way to show it: it's the only medium I know that regularly has classifieds in the back selling whole airports in Gambia, refineries in Vietnam, or inviting applications to be the UN's High Commissioner for Complicated Negotiations regarding Time Zones in littoral Antarctica.
Kind of makes my point. The ruling elites where never known for their intelligence -- but it's even less so in the 21st century (Trump anyone? Bush? Even Obama and Clinton are more mass media darlings than men of state the way someone like Churchill or De Gaulle was, with a knowledge of the world's intricacies and world history).
As I said, I'm not very much for received ideas and preconceived notions of what's worthy and what's intelligent. And degrees really don't tell me anything for this. Any idiot can have one (I should know, for I have one). Even more so, any idiot can have the money to buy a "refinery in Vietnam". It might take business savvy (if the money weren't inherited in the first place, or stolen from the public, e.g. by some corrupt public official), but that's not the same thing as someone understanding foreign affairs.
So, while this was about the Economist in general, the parent response commented on how it "regularly has classifieds in the back selling whole airports in Gambia, refineries in Vietnam, or inviting applications to be the UN's High Commissioner for Complicated Negotiations regarding Time Zones in littoral Antarctica." -- as a way to show that the readership is especially refined and/or intelligent.
My response to this was that the elites who might be interested in buying "whole airports in Gambia" or be involved with the "UN's High Commissioner" are not necessarily refined or knowledgable about world affairs much more than the next person. Not even prominent politicians can be trusted to be nowadays -- to which I used Trump and Bush as examples.
(That said, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were both subscribers too. Many otherwise inane public figures are subscribers - I've met my share).
For most events in the world within minutes I m able to follow local people tweeting or writing in their newspapers what's happening.
I rather feel Economist has an economic and political target remaining from the days of the faded British Empire to comment about everything from Commonwealth and ex-British Empire countries .
It's usually to promote a certain angle and push a position rather than objectively investigate.
This "ad" is trying to benefit from post-Trump rise in newspaper subscriptions with a "let's help independent media" wave. Which is a good attempt.
Like it says in the article they are not just writing about the stories that are happening "this minute". They are writing about a range of other stuff, ie:
But each week we try to give them a selection of things that they didn’t know that they didn’t know. An example of this would be the recent piece we ran on the spread of unfamiliar grains. You can also look at stories we’ve done on the evolution of arranged marriage, on how to train good teachers or on how best to integrate autistic people into the workplace. These are stories about big ideas and big trends that readers might not know about
No, just let theirs readers get to that impression by themselves, by not covering those attempts as much.
>Finally, are you claiming that Russia does not try to influence politics in other countries?
Not that much, mostly to their neighbors, and not very successfully even there (e.g. how most of their periphery is not suffocating them with NATO allies).