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Comment by bjelkeman-again | Hacker News Reader

The interesting thing with the Economist is that they alone seem to be able to do what they do. A weekly editorial summary of news and relevant stories that people pay for, which is read by business people. Is there a competing magazine? I am not aware of it.

Their content is unrivalled, although you really need to be aware of their biases. But I don't feel they try to hide them, rather the opposite.

However, with so few global sources of information, like The Economist, that do a good job, aren't we in danger of quite a narrow understanding of what is going on?

I think the Guardian Weekly is an interesting counterpoint, but it isn't avaiable on digital afaik. Are ther other weekly news magazines that reaches the Economists editorial quality?

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Der Spiegel is a high quality weekly news magazine that I think compares favourably to The Economist if you read German.

I guess it's time to take a look at Der Spiegel again, but if I remember correctly, their focus is much more centered on Germany, Europe and the West, while the Economist has news from the whole world. And it's articles are short enough to read the whole magazine every week.

The other thing about Der Spiegel is they seem to enjoy provocative/trolling articles more frequently than TE (though TE goes in for this as well from time to time). For instance Der Spiegel seems to pretty frequently write long but vague pieces about how Silicon Valley is taking over the world, will our new techno-overlords be benevolent, etc. Whereas TE tends to treat the tech industry more as an interesting specimen of butterfly to be dispassionately studied.

How much that reflects Germanic vs Anglo views of the world, I don't know. But having read articles in Der Spiegel very occasionally, it gave me a pretty different vibe.

This model is used by any number of "business intelligence" micro-zines - which are basically market tip sheets, with some trend speculation.

It can be very lucrative if you get a following. I've seen sites charging four or five figure annual subscription fees for something that probably only takes a day or two a week to put together.

So IMV the Econo is really just industrialising that model, with some extra journo-fluff for credibility.

It's completely different to being a mainstream headline newsie like The Guardian, with a fundamentally different reader focus.

You're not selling news, you're selling the suggestion that you're on the inside track, with access to the thoughts and beliefs of people who make policy and move markets.

You are comparing news to market research...

Is there a hard distinction?

I'm not sure how to respond to that question, so I will just give a straight answer.

Yes. A very big one.

Let me try this again, since your answer contains no information. Why do people read news? What are they trying to get from it? Especially in the case of the Economist, a large fraction of the readers are going to be in the business of finance and investment. For the microsecond-to-microsecond data, there's Bloomberg. For longer views? The Economist. Their entire pitch is that it's information likely to be useful to your business.

It would be nice to have other comparable sources, not least because The Economist is very influential, and like any other institution or person, they are often wrong. They seem pretty aware of this, and they write their articles in way that their readers can exert critical thinking. So in the absence of alternatives, we are kind of forced/encouraged to think critically, which is not such a bad thing in the end.

I just found that Le Monde Diplomatique actually has an online version. Unfortunately it is only a packaged PDF it seems. However, the content is often a very interesting counterpoint to the standard Anglo-Saxon fare.

The really interesting thing is that the Economist has been able to increase their rates while still growing subscriptions. Their digital subscription is as much as print as well. They have been blessed by a wealthy readership that is price-insensitive.

I subscribe and would probably continue to subscribe if they jacked up their rates to $200/yr.

It's much less frequent of course, but Foreign Affairs is in the same space.

Yes, I occationally read it, but often I find it hard to deal with the perspective it is written from. Which is really why I should read it.

In the US, Time is the closest equivalent. But I certainly wouldn't argue that it's of the same quality overall--and certainly not of the same breadth. The American news magazines were always fluffier and rather US-centric--and these days the one survivor is rather thin some weeks.

Financial Times.

But that's daily. I do agree that the FT and probably the NYT are of the same quality. But it takes as lot more time to wade through a daily.

I always enjoy the FT Weekend. In general, I find that I miss little from reading my news at the weekends, as there tends to be more analysis.

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