Articles in The Economist are usually a better investment of my time. I was originally introduced to the magazine by a teacher in high school, but I've come to learn that many other people weren't as fortunate.
It isn't just the spin; sometimes you can guess whom they were talking to and whom they weren't by how wrong and they way they get something wrong.
Gell-Mann Amnesia, as Michael Crichton put it:
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
When the bad drives out the good, it's no surprise that no one wants to pay for the bad.
The fact is, nobody has offered me access to a news source that covers all topics of possible interest in a manner that's free from overt biases (or poorly-hidden ones) and intelligence-insulting "both sides" fallacies. Bloomberg certainly doesn't qualify.
If such a service is ever offered, I don't expect it to be cheap, much less free... but rest assured I'll listen to their pitch. I'm sure I'm not the only potential customer for a high-end premium news product that I can actually trust.
Also note that The Economist can well be the greatest paper in the world, despite being somewhat afflicted by Gell-Mann Amnesia.
Sorry to fall back on a stereotype, but they come off as Oxford students sitting in college, pontificating on the world they've read about.
Maybe I'm mostly thinking about their pseudo-opinion pieces. It just got to the point I didn't enjoy reading them, and no longer do.
Learned this in one of the articles in this thread:
Shortly after his return, he hired a new editor-in-chief -- John Micklethwait, of The Economist https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/07/bloomberg-fires...
They are also owned by a foundation so are less subject to the vicissitudes of the markets.
The Economist has its limitations, blind spots, specific ideology, and such as well. But it’s well worth the read; I have not missed an issue since early 1985
IIRC, weekly newsmagazines are pretty much the ideal compromise between timeliness and accuracy: they have far more time to fact-check than a daily paper (and have the luxury of letting things play out a bit more before publication), but aren't dated by (at least) a couple years like your typical book is at publication time.
Too bad they're a dying breed. Another good thing the internet economics killed.
> The Economist has its limitations, blind spots, specific ideology, and such as well.
This is a really fantastic article on those: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/liberalism-acc...
I read @TheEconomist cover-to-cover because its content makes me think critically about the world. Its editors recently asked me a tough question: What is the one thing you'd do to create a more open world? See my answer below and share your answer here: https://b-gat.es/2LTs1WM
Jul 27, 2018
The modern Bloomberg was an attempt to become The Economist.
I used to read The Economist, then in the build up to 2008 when according to them all the growth was actual real growth, the system was fine, and banks knew what they were doing.
I no longer read it.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2005/06/16/in-come-...
The analysis from a journal that purports to be about economics should have come in the build up to the crisis, not when the first huge cracks appear in the damn, having spent the prior decade shouting "put more water in".
Also, just generally, they aren't particularly "neoliberal" (I am not quite sure what that means but okay). Since the editor switch, there has been a massive, massive change in style (I have been reading since the early 2000s...Mickelthwait, the guy in the OP, was actually the best...he is a legend).
A leftist would have the government build housing for the poor. A conservative would let the poor fend for themselves or rely on charity. A neo-liberal would tweak the rules so that market builds housing for the poor.
That (or in its older guise, free-trade principles) is literally a founding premise of the newspaper:
PROSPECTUS: of a weekly paper, to be published every Saturday, and to be called THE ECONOMIST, which will contain ... First.—ORIGINAL LEADING ARTICLES, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day—political events—and parliamentary discussions; and particularly to all such as relate immediately to revenue, commerce, and agriculture; or otherwise affect the material interests of the country....
Adam Smith, whom they model themselves after, was against rentier activity, The Economist is not.
The UK is presently embroiled in negotiating all kinds of trade agreements as part of Brexit, and none of the countries will be signing a reciprocal "free trade" agreement between the two, it's a pipe dream.
In addition, Smith would have been appalled at the UK running a huge deficit ad-infinitum, selling off land to pay for it, and generally making very little. The Economist has very little to do with classic liberals. What The Economist supports now is lunacy, and we've seen in the response to Covid in the UK and the USA that both countries are on their knees.
Again: I find it slavishly neo-liberal.
I agree, it holds rentier activity on par with wealth creation, which Adam Smith would never have done.
https://www.prosper.org.au/geoists-in-history/adam-smith-on-...
It is massively incompatible.
Whether or not neoliberalism is the One True Descendant of Adam Smith is a notion up for debate, though there's a fair argument to be made that neoliberal adherants position it as such.
I've my own views of what Smith actually advocated (based in large part on reading him). Though I would be pressed to find where he specifically inveighs against long-term national deficit spending. I would argue that monetary policy has evolved considerably since Smith.
My third paragraph though is decidedly secondary to my first.
It does not represent Adam Smith, who disliked rentiers:
> “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”
They do not make their prospectus visible. If you do not subscribe you cannot even read their principals. In any case writing one thing down and doing another is very common. The Economist is obsessed with financialisation and cheer-led the utter mess the UK and USA are in for decades.
Obviously it's up to each person if they continue to read it. I dispute it's quality, I think it's neoliberal propaganda and nothing more.
Outside of foreign policy and politics I’ve found them to be pretty exemplary
You have to separate the wheat from the chaff with Bloomberg. When Mickelthwait came in, BBG's public stuff was utterly dire. They have improved significantly. Have they gone too Business Insider? Yes. But they have improved significantly from where they were.