15 ms·

For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

180 points by _jgvg 11y ago

pa5tabear 11y ago
The first issue from 1843 can be viewed here, and Incognito mode can be used to (mostly?) bypass the article viewing limits: http://www.economist.com/node/2002191 http://www.economist.com/node/2002191
rm999 11y ago
> Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times, which has had a non-controlling 50% stake in us since 1928, is selling. Three-fifths of those shares will go to an existing shareholder—Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family. The rest will be bought back by our parent company, The Economist Group. Phew, I was really worried they were selling to News Corp or something when I saw the headline. I've often thought of the Economist as the weekly version of FT, but the two are actually quite independent from each other (both in editorial control and legal control). Pearson had a 50% stake in the Economist but only 6/13 board seats. And the Economist has been great about fiercely guarding its editorial independence.
- potatoman2 11y ago
  What's wrong with News Corp?
  - mpweiher 11y ago
    Aport from everything?
  - pyre 11y ago
    A better question is what do you think isn't wrong with News Corp.?
    - riffraff 11y ago
      no it isn't, unless you assume the person you reply to already knows about the topic and is defending it. But if you consider the question as "I don't know what is wrong with news corp" than it's the best question you can ask.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    News Corp biases its companies in favor of News Corp. The Economist has always been the hallmark of an independent newspaper that published a consistent of opinions in line with reality. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/news-corp-bias-against-kevin-rudd-showed-up-in-independent-study-diary-reveals-20131106-2x1ig.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/news-c... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/attacks-on-abc-expose-new-corps-hidden-agenda http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/attacks-on-abc-... And I don't think anyone reasonable believes Fox is anything but a Conservatives-centric news network that plays out the News Corp official line in all situations.
    - kuni-toko-tachi 11y ago
      The Economist is the propaganda mouthpiece of the elite and it's cover is a revealing indication of future plans. It's stories are easily debunked as fiction even with cursory internet searches.
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      The Economist does in fact have a marked and explicit editorial mission to promote free trade principles, set forth in their Prospectus[1], specifically, that "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", and "POPULAR MOVEMENTS: A report and account of all popular movements throughout the country in favour of Free Trade." Unlike some organisations (e.g., NewsCorp), these biases are at least explicitly stated, if not widely known. While I generally respect it, I find its skew at times quite painful to swallow. At least the writing is generally well executed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Notes: 1. http://www.economist.com/node/1873493 http://www.economist.com/node/1873493
      - fweespeech 11y ago
        There is a world of difference between a group with the integrity to state its biases publicly and one that hides them in a dozen puppet papers.
  - arethuza 11y ago
    I find it impossible to think of News Corp without recalling Sun headlines like "It's The Sun Wot Won It" and "Gotcha": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It
    - ctz 11y ago
      Don't forget "The Truth".
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Its what would happen if a publishing company was run by Darth Vader and the Emperor, with occasional consulting performed by Dick Cheney.
    - venomsnake 11y ago
      Well Glenn Beck was as close as you could get to Jar Jar binks ...
      - M2Ys4U 11y ago
        Jar Jar Binks is far more likeable.
  - andrepd 11y ago
    The most recent and most serious scandal involving News Corporation was 2011 phone hacking scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_News_Corporation_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_News_Corporation_scandals). Gives you an idea of what sort of scumbags run that mega-conglomerate.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      That's the most recent? Just in July there were supposedly part of a giant plan with the MPAA to slander Google to manipulate stock prices. It's amazing anyone takes NewsCorp seriously. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/72607/20150731/mpaa-secret-plan-to-attack-google-via-media-revealed-in-emails.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/72607/20150731/mpaa-secret...
- ucaetano 11y ago
  "Pearson had a 50% stake in the Economist but only 6/13 board seats." And the board isn't even that powerful, it needs consent from the Trustees for many things, such as appointing the editor and the chairman: http://www.economistgroup.com/results_and_governance/trustees.html http://www.economistgroup.com/results_and_governance/trustee...
- eddieh 11y ago
  My sentiments exactly. It is a breath of fresh air to see a company depart from a huge multinational like Pearson. Somehow I wasn't aware that Pearson had a stake in the Economist and I frequent "Who Owns What" http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php. Now that I know I'm not subsidizing Pearson with my subscription, I'll be even happier to renew.
  - jazzyk 11y ago
    You will be subsidizing a few rich industrialist families instead, among them the Rothschilds, who increased their stake from 21% to 26%. Thought you might want want to know :-)
- udev 11y ago
  > Phew, I was really worried they were selling to News Corp or something when I saw the headline. I am more wary of one of those greasy-activist-investor types coming into the picture and demanding the publication "does more for the investors", i.e. more Kardashian-style (garbage) news.
  - floatrock 11y ago
    You can read all about how good activist investors are in the Economist's cover story a few months back: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21642169-why-activist-investors-are-good-public-company-capitalisms-unlikely-heroes http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21642169-why-activist-... ;)
vonnik 11y ago
The great champion of free markets is a remarkably illiquid good.
osipovas 11y ago
My life has changed for the better since subscribing to the Economist in 2011. For me, it's not about paying for content (which is great) but for the 'feeling of being informed'. After reading each issue I feel informed about what is going on around the world. This has sparked many conversations with people from around the world. I hope that following this transition that 'feeling of being informed' will not go away and I have no reason to suspect it would. If only I had local and regional news at such a calibre...
- chm 11y ago
  I coincidentally also subscribed to the Economist in 2011 and I can relate to the feeling of being informed. However I had to cancel my subscription in 2013 for lack of time. After a while, I could never finish an issue. To be honest I have regretted my decision and I now feed on lesser quality news from "free" sources. It really is a great publication but I couldn't justify the spending or the piling up of issues. I might go back this year, been thinking about it.
  - tmcz26 11y ago
    I had the same issue when I was up for renewal a few years back, with issues piling up and no time, but I didn't want to miss the content. I first tried the audio version of the iPhone app, but the complexity of the content was too much for a non-English native. Finally I decided for the digital version on the iPhone gap, which I read while commuting.
  - rm999 11y ago
    I had the same issue. Then I found out the Economist puts out a audio version of their entire print edition. My podcast app downloads it automatically every Thursday (using RSS), and it provides me with more than enough content for the week. I listen to it at 1.5x speed and can get through 5-10 articles during my commute.
  - saryant 11y ago
    If you have airline miles lying around, most programs offer a year subscription for around 5000 miles. No digital access though, just print.
tschellenbach 11y ago
By far my favourite publication. Well, after Hacker News ;)
LukeHoersten 11y ago
When I read about topics in which I have first hand experience, I feel The Economist does an excellent job of portraying the facts and different perspectives. This almost never happens in any mainstream media, especially regarding technology and trading. Therefore, I trust The Economist on topics in which I don't have first hand experience. They rarely let me down. I hope this continues and it seems they believe it will only improve.
- udev 11y ago
  This sums up my experience too.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- davidw 11y ago
  Yes - I recall reading it at a friend's house in the late 90ies, talking about open source software. I expected a bit more negative reaction from a business-oriented publication, but they had most of their facts right and seemed to have a pretty good take on things. I subscribed afterwards myself. I also love the fact that they got into a legal tussle with Berlusconi after having called him not fit to lead Italy - and won!
  - da_chicken 11y ago
    They let that speak for itself, too: http://www.economist.com/node/12076765 http://www.economist.com/node/12076765
- gozo 11y ago
  I used to have that feeling to, but that has changed in recent years. For instance they gravely misrepresented things in a their Nordic issue a couple of years back.
bkjelden 11y ago
I thought it was interesting that they mentioned they have 10M twitter followers compared to 5.6M Facebook fans - interesting given Facebook has 5x the MAU of twitter.
- Altay- 11y ago
  Important people use Twitter. Teens and grandmothers use Facebook.
  - garethsprice 11y ago
    Teens don't use Facebook. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30603/20150203/faceook-losing-teen-audience-now-its-just-old-people-socializing.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30603/20150203/faceook-los...
    - waterlesscloud 11y ago
      That article seems to indicate that 88% of teenage social media users use Facebook.
  - andrepd 11y ago
    Important people use both, because they can't afford the limited exposure using only one of them brings.
plg 11y ago
The Economist is a prime example of how for-pay curated content can work and can work well to serve a market... a wide market. Can you imagine, just imagine, how craptastic The Economist would be if it were "free" and all you had to do was endure curated advertisements? PS I would pay extra if they would stop stapling in those cardboard subscription cards in the middle of the (print) issue. PPS I feel the same way about the NY Times---worth paying for---although they have gone so broad recently that I'm worried they're becoming unfocused, trying to appeal to too many at once.
- kanwisher 11y ago
  Economist is the only publication i pay for. I'm not sure how many newspapers/magazines could really follow suit. There is only so many high quality sources anyone can read, its a small niche I think. Also the average economist reader is probably quite high on income so I suspect thats a skews their ability to charge
  - Retric 11y ago
    At 1$/week you can pay for 1 author per ~2,000 subscribers. That can work at a really small scale as long as the rest of your costs are kept low.
    - eterm 11y ago
      $1/week is a lot for what a single author could put out. If you take into account time researching, I can't imagine that would amount to more an article per week at any kind of quality?
      - Retric 11y ago
        Let's say you have 40k readers and 50/50 overhead vs writers. So, 40k people pay 1$ and get to read the output from ~10 writers. Now, get another ~2k people to sign up and that just about covers another author assuming your overhead does not increase. Clearly, you can play with these numbers with various assumptions and readerships. But, the point is you can scale things down with paid subscribers.
deleted 11y ago
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eastbayjake 11y ago
I've been reading The Economist for ten years, including this week's issue during my BART ride this morning. Other commenters have voiced appreciation for their in-depth reporting and liberal (in the classical sense of free people and free markets) values, but we haven't mentioned the paper's sense of humor -- the jokes are small but clever, and make for a more interesting read than the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times without sacrificing an ounce of rigor.
- pearkes 11y ago
  They don't get enough credit for their humour. The covers sometimes have me cutting them off and hanging them on the wall – a great recent example was the "Hiyatollah!" cover. http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2015-07-16/ap-e-eu-la-me-na-uk http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2015-07-16/ap-e...
felixgallo 11y ago
The Economist has swung increasingly right-wing in its editorial stances and even editing over the last several years. It will be interesting to see if this change has any impact either way.
- antr 11y ago
  As a subscriber of the economist since 2003, I'm curious to know which articles and views you are referring to. If anything, the Economist is one of the most (if not the most) balanced magazine I've ever come across.
  - jcmoscon 11y ago
    Come on. It's the left-wing weekly magazine. I can't read it. It's Keynesianism propaganda.
    - CamperBob2 11y ago
      You're confusing it with some other publication, I'm guessing.
      - selectodude 11y ago
        You know the Economist is a pretty good publication when people can't decide if it's a far-left or far right mouthpiece.
        CamperBob2 11y ago
        Agreed, that's where they want to be, I think. But they're definitely more in tune with the Austrian school than with the Keynesians or the Krugmanites. Calling it a "left-wing weekly" is pretty questionable.
  - glup 11y ago
    I think the pro-free-trade, anti-regulation, anti-union, and anti-populist sentiment used to be limited to the 'leaders' or specific editorials; since ~2006 it has become much more common in the content articles. I think it's 1) more balanced than most 2) still not very balanced and 3) easy enough to sort out the facts from the liberal (in the global sense of the word) triumphalism.
acd 11y ago
"The Economist Group is owned by the Cadbury, Rothschild, Schroder, Agnelli and other family interests as well as a number of staff and former staff shareholders. " source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group
- contingencies 11y ago
  http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/gianni-agnelli-alan-friedman http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/gianni-agnelli-alan-f...
tzs 11y ago
Speaking of The Economist, is anyone else getting a ridiculous amount of third party spam pushing The Economist subscriptions? I'm getting several a day, typically from domains in the new TLDs, such as .date, .science, .faith, and .review. The domain names match the IP addresses, have SPF records that check out, and they body doesn't have any of the usual things that make it look like spam, and so Spamassassin is marking many of these with a score of around -2.4. They look so non-spammy that even though I keep feeding them to my "train spam" script I'm barely getting the score to move. (Occasionally one does come from an IP that is in a blocklist and so does get marked as spam) I assumed they were probably phishing attempts, but all the links really do go to The Economist's website, and the ones in the mail that go to ordering pages use https and the certificate checks out. My current guess is that it is a rogue affiliate, or possibly that The Economist is not doing a good job of policing their affiliates since the rules of their affiliate program [1] (assuming that's what those actually are) says that affiliates can send email to people in their own database, but that these must be approved by the merchant (which would be The Economist) prior to being sent. All the links when they end up at The Economist have a /AFF/DM appended which I'm guessing identifies the affiliate. I'm absolutely certain that I did not subscribe to their affiliate's list because not only am I getting these at my home address, I am also getting them at my work address, AND I'm getting them at several former co-worker addresses that are forwarded to me (just in case some legacy report or monitor was overlooked when addresses were updated when they left), and I'm also getting them on some work mailing list addresses (e.g., it@my_employer). [1] https://subscriptions.economist.com/CE/affilinet_TCs.pdf https://subscriptions.economist.com/CE/affilinet_TCs.pdf
- rsync 11y ago
  Yes - I am seeing 2-3 economist emails daily.
- jaskerr 11y ago
  Be sure to check the origin/return address before you blame the Economist. I receive multiple Economist spam emails a day, and none of them are from <>@economist.com, or a marketing firm. The TLDs alone give them away: <>@<>.faith, <>@<>.date, and so on. The links in the emails also go to the odd TLDs or to clearly bogus domains.
amagumori 11y ago
ah yes, The Economist, or, as it was originally titled, The Empire-Builder's Colonialist Companion, but that was too obvious
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Incorrect: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/The_Economist_May_16_1846.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/The_Econ...
unfamiliar 11y ago
Do the shares sold still remain non-controlling with the new owners?
orf 11y ago
Screw it, I just subscribed. I often read articles from the Economist and often quite enjoy them, I think I will quite enjoy a physical copy delivered every week.
gcv 11y ago
The obituaries are brilliant. One of the best things I read every week.
- selimthegrim 11y ago
  I think a few years ago they had a section outlining all the polite British euphemisms that are employed in writing unflattering obituaries yet avoiding the libel lawyers (describing a philanderer, drunkard, closet homosexual, etc. in so many words recognizable to all yet not exposing undue liability) edit: http://www.economist.com/node/21541767 http://www.economist.com/node/21541767 Reminds me of when Watson expesses sudden outrage at his newspaper description of himself as a 'confirmed bachelor' on the Sherlock TV show I bent over double laughing, utterly mystifying my friends.
moksha256 11y ago
For those complaining about The Economist for content and bias, I've found Current History to be an excellent substitute.
hackuser 11y ago
I think people don't grasp the enormous influence publishers of news have, and thus the signifance to everyone of who owns them, their politics, integrity, and whether they will insist on journalistic integrity or compromise it. I see many, many people repeating what is effectively propaganda from News Corp publications (Fox and the Wall St Journal), competely unwittingly. The public seems surprisingly easy to manipulate, and few seem to care for accountability from their news sources. > The Economist, whose editorial independence is absolute and is fiercely guarded by four independent trustees Everyone says things like that. I hope it's true for them; there are few publications that are there equal and millions take them at their work.
- hackuser 11y ago
  Ouch. I wish I could go back and edit that. I need to post a little more slowly on HN.
Marazan 11y ago
Inceidetally, given that I've done a lot of complaining about the Economist in this thread, one of the things I really like is that their world view is not the "Ra Ra Free Market Uber Alles" that they are so often parodied as. They often firmly advocate government spending and market regulation as the correct solution to problems. They have a flexible world view in general.

180 points by _jgvg 11y ago

The first issue from 1843 can be viewed here, and Incognito mode can be used to (mostly?) bypass the article viewing limits: http://www.economist.com/node/2002191 http://www.economist.com/node/2002191

rm999 11y ago

> Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times, which has had a non-controlling 50% stake in us since 1928, is selling. Three-fifths of those shares will go to an existing shareholder—Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family. The rest will be bought back by our parent company, The Economist Group. Phew, I was really worried they were selling to News Corp or something when I saw the headline. I've often thought of the Economist as the weekly version of FT, but the two are actually quite independent from each other (both in editorial control and legal control). Pearson had a 50% stake in the Economist but only 6/13 board seats. And the Economist has been great about fiercely guarding its editorial independence.

potatoman2 11y ago
What's wrong with News Corp?
- mpweiher 11y ago
  Aport from everything?
- pyre 11y ago
  A better question is what do you think isn't wrong with News Corp.?
  - riffraff 11y ago
    no it isn't, unless you assume the person you reply to already knows about the topic and is defending it. But if you consider the question as "I don't know what is wrong with news corp" than it's the best question you can ask.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  News Corp biases its companies in favor of News Corp. The Economist has always been the hallmark of an independent newspaper that published a consistent of opinions in line with reality. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/news-corp-bias-against-kevin-rudd-showed-up-in-independent-study-diary-reveals-20131106-2x1ig.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/news-c... http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/attacks-on-abc-expose-new-corps-hidden-agenda http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/attacks-on-abc-... And I don't think anyone reasonable believes Fox is anything but a Conservatives-centric news network that plays out the News Corp official line in all situations.
  - kuni-toko-tachi 11y ago
    The Economist is the propaganda mouthpiece of the elite and it's cover is a revealing indication of future plans. It's stories are easily debunked as fiction even with cursory internet searches.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    The Economist does in fact have a marked and explicit editorial mission to promote free trade principles, set forth in their Prospectus[1], specifically, that "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", and "POPULAR MOVEMENTS: A report and account of all popular movements throughout the country in favour of Free Trade." Unlike some organisations (e.g., NewsCorp), these biases are at least explicitly stated, if not widely known. While I generally respect it, I find its skew at times quite painful to swallow. At least the writing is generally well executed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Notes: 1. http://www.economist.com/node/1873493 http://www.economist.com/node/1873493
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      There is a world of difference between a group with the integrity to state its biases publicly and one that hides them in a dozen puppet papers.
- arethuza 11y ago
  I find it impossible to think of News Corp without recalling Sun headlines like "It's The Sun Wot Won It" and "Gotcha": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It
  - ctz 11y ago
    Don't forget "The Truth".
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Its what would happen if a publishing company was run by Darth Vader and the Emperor, with occasional consulting performed by Dick Cheney.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    Well Glenn Beck was as close as you could get to Jar Jar binks ...
    - M2Ys4U 11y ago
      Jar Jar Binks is far more likeable.
- andrepd 11y ago
  The most recent and most serious scandal involving News Corporation was 2011 phone hacking scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_News_Corporation_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_News_Corporation_scandals). Gives you an idea of what sort of scumbags run that mega-conglomerate.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    That's the most recent? Just in July there were supposedly part of a giant plan with the MPAA to slander Google to manipulate stock prices. It's amazing anyone takes NewsCorp seriously. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/72607/20150731/mpaa-secret-plan-to-attack-google-via-media-revealed-in-emails.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/72607/20150731/mpaa-secret...
ucaetano 11y ago
"Pearson had a 50% stake in the Economist but only 6/13 board seats." And the board isn't even that powerful, it needs consent from the Trustees for many things, such as appointing the editor and the chairman: http://www.economistgroup.com/results_and_governance/trustees.html http://www.economistgroup.com/results_and_governance/trustee...
eddieh 11y ago
My sentiments exactly. It is a breath of fresh air to see a company depart from a huge multinational like Pearson. Somehow I wasn't aware that Pearson had a stake in the Economist and I frequent "Who Owns What" http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php. Now that I know I'm not subsidizing Pearson with my subscription, I'll be even happier to renew.
- jazzyk 11y ago
  You will be subsidizing a few rich industrialist families instead, among them the Rothschilds, who increased their stake from 21% to 26%. Thought you might want want to know :-)
udev 11y ago
> Phew, I was really worried they were selling to News Corp or something when I saw the headline. I am more wary of one of those greasy-activist-investor types coming into the picture and demanding the publication "does more for the investors", i.e. more Kardashian-style (garbage) news.
- floatrock 11y ago
  You can read all about how good activist investors are in the Economist's cover story a few months back: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21642169-why-activist-investors-are-good-public-company-capitalisms-unlikely-heroes http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21642169-why-activist-... ;)

vonnik 11y ago

The great champion of free markets is a remarkably illiquid good.

osipovas 11y ago

My life has changed for the better since subscribing to the Economist in 2011. For me, it's not about paying for content (which is great) but for the 'feeling of being informed'. After reading each issue I feel informed about what is going on around the world. This has sparked many conversations with people from around the world. I hope that following this transition that 'feeling of being informed' will not go away and I have no reason to suspect it would. If only I had local and regional news at such a calibre...

chm 11y ago
I coincidentally also subscribed to the Economist in 2011 and I can relate to the feeling of being informed. However I had to cancel my subscription in 2013 for lack of time. After a while, I could never finish an issue. To be honest I have regretted my decision and I now feed on lesser quality news from "free" sources. It really is a great publication but I couldn't justify the spending or the piling up of issues. I might go back this year, been thinking about it.
- tmcz26 11y ago
  I had the same issue when I was up for renewal a few years back, with issues piling up and no time, but I didn't want to miss the content. I first tried the audio version of the iPhone app, but the complexity of the content was too much for a non-English native. Finally I decided for the digital version on the iPhone gap, which I read while commuting.
- rm999 11y ago
  I had the same issue. Then I found out the Economist puts out a audio version of their entire print edition. My podcast app downloads it automatically every Thursday (using RSS), and it provides me with more than enough content for the week. I listen to it at 1.5x speed and can get through 5-10 articles during my commute.
- saryant 11y ago
  If you have airline miles lying around, most programs offer a year subscription for around 5000 miles. No digital access though, just print.

tschellenbach 11y ago

By far my favourite publication. Well, after Hacker News ;)

LukeHoersten 11y ago

When I read about topics in which I have first hand experience, I feel The Economist does an excellent job of portraying the facts and different perspectives. This almost never happens in any mainstream media, especially regarding technology and trading. Therefore, I trust The Economist on topics in which I don't have first hand experience. They rarely let me down. I hope this continues and it seems they believe it will only improve.

udev 11y ago
This sums up my experience too.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
davidw 11y ago
Yes - I recall reading it at a friend's house in the late 90ies, talking about open source software. I expected a bit more negative reaction from a business-oriented publication, but they had most of their facts right and seemed to have a pretty good take on things. I subscribed afterwards myself. I also love the fact that they got into a legal tussle with Berlusconi after having called him not fit to lead Italy - and won!
- da_chicken 11y ago
  They let that speak for itself, too: http://www.economist.com/node/12076765 http://www.economist.com/node/12076765
gozo 11y ago
I used to have that feeling to, but that has changed in recent years. For instance they gravely misrepresented things in a their Nordic issue a couple of years back.

bkjelden 11y ago

I thought it was interesting that they mentioned they have 10M twitter followers compared to 5.6M Facebook fans - interesting given Facebook has 5x the MAU of twitter.

Altay- 11y ago
Important people use Twitter. Teens and grandmothers use Facebook.
- garethsprice 11y ago
  Teens don't use Facebook. http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30603/20150203/faceook-losing-teen-audience-now-its-just-old-people-socializing.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30603/20150203/faceook-los...
  - waterlesscloud 11y ago
    That article seems to indicate that 88% of teenage social media users use Facebook.
- andrepd 11y ago
  Important people use both, because they can't afford the limited exposure using only one of them brings.

plg 11y ago

The Economist is a prime example of how for-pay curated content can work and can work well to serve a market... a wide market. Can you imagine, just imagine, how craptastic The Economist would be if it were "free" and all you had to do was endure curated advertisements? PS I would pay extra if they would stop stapling in those cardboard subscription cards in the middle of the (print) issue. PPS I feel the same way about the NY Times---worth paying for---although they have gone so broad recently that I'm worried they're becoming unfocused, trying to appeal to too many at once.

kanwisher 11y ago
Economist is the only publication i pay for. I'm not sure how many newspapers/magazines could really follow suit. There is only so many high quality sources anyone can read, its a small niche I think. Also the average economist reader is probably quite high on income so I suspect thats a skews their ability to charge
- Retric 11y ago
  At 1$/week you can pay for 1 author per ~2,000 subscribers. That can work at a really small scale as long as the rest of your costs are kept low.
  - eterm 11y ago
    $1/week is a lot for what a single author could put out. If you take into account time researching, I can't imagine that would amount to more an article per week at any kind of quality?
    - Retric 11y ago
      Let's say you have 40k readers and 50/50 overhead vs writers. So, 40k people pay 1$ and get to read the output from ~10 writers. Now, get another ~2k people to sign up and that just about covers another author assuming your overhead does not increase. Clearly, you can play with these numbers with various assumptions and readerships. But, the point is you can scale things down with paid subscribers.

deleted 11y ago

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eastbayjake 11y ago

I've been reading The Economist for ten years, including this week's issue during my BART ride this morning. Other commenters have voiced appreciation for their in-depth reporting and liberal (in the classical sense of free people and free markets) values, but we haven't mentioned the paper's sense of humor -- the jokes are small but clever, and make for a more interesting read than the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times without sacrificing an ounce of rigor.

pearkes 11y ago
They don't get enough credit for their humour. The covers sometimes have me cutting them off and hanging them on the wall – a great recent example was the "Hiyatollah!" cover. http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2015-07-16/ap-e-eu-la-me-na-uk http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2015-07-16/ap-e...

felixgallo 11y ago

The Economist has swung increasingly right-wing in its editorial stances and even editing over the last several years. It will be interesting to see if this change has any impact either way.

antr 11y ago
As a subscriber of the economist since 2003, I'm curious to know which articles and views you are referring to. If anything, the Economist is one of the most (if not the most) balanced magazine I've ever come across.
- jcmoscon 11y ago
  Come on. It's the left-wing weekly magazine. I can't read it. It's Keynesianism propaganda.
  - CamperBob2 11y ago
    You're confusing it with some other publication, I'm guessing.
    - selectodude 11y ago
      You know the Economist is a pretty good publication when people can't decide if it's a far-left or far right mouthpiece.
      - CamperBob2 11y ago
        Agreed, that's where they want to be, I think. But they're definitely more in tune with the Austrian school than with the Keynesians or the Krugmanites. Calling it a "left-wing weekly" is pretty questionable.
- glup 11y ago
  I think the pro-free-trade, anti-regulation, anti-union, and anti-populist sentiment used to be limited to the 'leaders' or specific editorials; since ~2006 it has become much more common in the content articles. I think it's 1) more balanced than most 2) still not very balanced and 3) easy enough to sort out the facts from the liberal (in the global sense of the word) triumphalism.

acd 11y ago

"The Economist Group is owned by the Cadbury, Rothschild, Schroder, Agnelli and other family interests as well as a number of staff and former staff shareholders. " source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economist_Group

contingencies 11y ago
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/gianni-agnelli-alan-friedman http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/gianni-agnelli-alan-f...

tzs 11y ago

Speaking of The Economist, is anyone else getting a ridiculous amount of third party spam pushing The Economist subscriptions? I'm getting several a day, typically from domains in the new TLDs, such as .date, .science, .faith, and .review. The domain names match the IP addresses, have SPF records that check out, and they body doesn't have any of the usual things that make it look like spam, and so Spamassassin is marking many of these with a score of around -2.4. They look so non-spammy that even though I keep feeding them to my "train spam" script I'm barely getting the score to move. (Occasionally one does come from an IP that is in a blocklist and so does get marked as spam) I assumed they were probably phishing attempts, but all the links really do go to The Economist's website, and the ones in the mail that go to ordering pages use https and the certificate checks out. My current guess is that it is a rogue affiliate, or possibly that The Economist is not doing a good job of policing their affiliates since the rules of their affiliate program [1] (assuming that's what those actually are) says that affiliates can send email to people in their own database, but that these must be approved by the merchant (which would be The Economist) prior to being sent. All the links when they end up at The Economist have a /AFF/DM appended which I'm guessing identifies the affiliate. I'm absolutely certain that I did not subscribe to their affiliate's list because not only am I getting these at my home address, I am also getting them at my work address, AND I'm getting them at several former co-worker addresses that are forwarded to me (just in case some legacy report or monitor was overlooked when addresses were updated when they left), and I'm also getting them on some work mailing list addresses (e.g., it@my_employer). [1] https://subscriptions.economist.com/CE/affilinet_TCs.pdf https://subscriptions.economist.com/CE/affilinet_TCs.pdf

rsync 11y ago
Yes - I am seeing 2-3 economist emails daily.
jaskerr 11y ago
Be sure to check the origin/return address before you blame the Economist. I receive multiple Economist spam emails a day, and none of them are from <>@economist.com, or a marketing firm. The TLDs alone give them away: <>@<>.faith, <>@<>.date, and so on. The links in the emails also go to the odd TLDs or to clearly bogus domains.

amagumori 11y ago

ah yes, The Economist, or, as it was originally titled, The Empire-Builder's Colonialist Companion, but that was too obvious

dredmorbius 11y ago
Incorrect: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/The_Economist_May_16_1846.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/The_Econ...

unfamiliar 11y ago

Do the shares sold still remain non-controlling with the new owners?

orf 11y ago

Screw it, I just subscribed. I often read articles from the Economist and often quite enjoy them, I think I will quite enjoy a physical copy delivered every week.

gcv 11y ago

The obituaries are brilliant. One of the best things I read every week.

selimthegrim 11y ago
I think a few years ago they had a section outlining all the polite British euphemisms that are employed in writing unflattering obituaries yet avoiding the libel lawyers (describing a philanderer, drunkard, closet homosexual, etc. in so many words recognizable to all yet not exposing undue liability) edit: http://www.economist.com/node/21541767 http://www.economist.com/node/21541767 Reminds me of when Watson expesses sudden outrage at his newspaper description of himself as a 'confirmed bachelor' on the Sherlock TV show I bent over double laughing, utterly mystifying my friends.

moksha256 11y ago

For those complaining about The Economist for content and bias, I've found Current History to be an excellent substitute.

hackuser 11y ago

I think people don't grasp the enormous influence publishers of news have, and thus the signifance to everyone of who owns them, their politics, integrity, and whether they will insist on journalistic integrity or compromise it. I see many, many people repeating what is effectively propaganda from News Corp publications (Fox and the Wall St Journal), competely unwittingly. The public seems surprisingly easy to manipulate, and few seem to care for accountability from their news sources. > The Economist, whose editorial independence is absolute and is fiercely guarded by four independent trustees Everyone says things like that. I hope it's true for them; there are few publications that are there equal and millions take them at their work.

hackuser 11y ago
Ouch. I wish I could go back and edit that. I need to post a little more slowly on HN.

Marazan 11y ago

Inceidetally, given that I've done a lot of complaining about the Economist in this thread, one of the things I really like is that their world view is not the "Ra Ra Free Market Uber Alles" that they are so often parodied as. They often firmly advocate government spending and market regulation as the correct solution to problems. They have a flexible world view in general.