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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

by dade_ 6y ago

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. https://www.economist.com/ https://www.economist.com/

_jal 6y ago
I find that Economist articles about things I don't know much about are great. But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article. 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.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  I agree -- the Economist is the exact opposite of what Bloomberg is pointing out. They provide a few scant (or no) examples, and then oddly jump to extrapolating what we should do about the universe. They don't seem to build credibility within an article to make you think they should know what should be done on some specific issue. 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.
  - antipaul 6y ago
    It looks like the Bloomberg editor in chief is actually the former editor of The Economist, though he switched 5 years ago 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-digital-editor-josh-topolsky-210295 https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/07/bloomberg-fires...
- razakel 6y ago
  >But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article. 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."
  - philipodonnell 6y ago
    wow
  - the-pigeon 6y ago
    And IMO it's gotta much worse since Crichton said that do to online style publishing encouraging newspapers to be even looser with fact checkers and always trying to publish things ASAP over trying to publish something that is interesting, informative and/or factually corrective.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Some of it is rush to publish. But it's also that most readers here and elsewhere won't pay for subscriptions and will also do their best to avoid even the mediocre monetization provided by digital advertising. It's hard to support investigative reporting and fact checkers.
      - CamperBob2 6y ago
        It's hard to support investigative reporting and fact checkers. When the bad drives out the good, it's no surprise that no one wants to pay for the bad.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bagacrap 6y ago
  I have the same reaction to the stories on topics I'm familiar with, and it makes me distrust all the stories on other topics as well. There is a certain air or authority and erudition to the writing style, but I'm not sure it's warranted.
razakel 6y ago
Bill Gates has said The Economist is the only magazine he reads cover-to-cover as it makes him think critically about the world.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Blindly following what Bill Gates says he does would be the opposite of thinking critically, however ;)
- jjtheblunt 6y ago
  when did he say that?
  - KindOne 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/billgates/status/1022712786449846272 https://twitter.com/billgates/status/1022712786449846272 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 https://b-gat.es/2LTs1WM Jul 27, 2018
jgrahamc 6y ago
My tip for reading The Economist (I have a paper subscription) is to always start with the obituary. Their obituaries are wonderful.
- Austin_Conlon 6y ago
  Ann Wroe is an exceptional writer. My favorite obituary from that section is of a free diver: https://www.economist.com/obituary/2015/08/15/the-deepest-dive https://www.economist.com/obituary/2015/08/15/the-deepest-di....
- cgh 6y ago
  I do the same. I've often thought they should publish a book consisting solely of obituaries. As morbid as this sounds, it would be almost like a history of the last 100 years viewed through a very different lens.
amiga_500 6y ago
I find it to slavishly neoliberal. 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.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  I have the opposite experience. For example, they had a cover page article a about the global housing bubble in 2005. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2005/06/16/in-come-the-waves https://www.economist.com/special-report/2005/06/16/in-come-...
  - amiga_500 6y ago
    It was crystal clear by 2005 that it was all going to pop. 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".
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    You can go back further. They were writing articles about this in 03 and 04. They aren't right about everything but they will publish stuff about high valuations, etc. 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).
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      I think the Economist is pretty much the definition of neoliberal (in the old sense, before it acquired all the negative connotations). "Liberal goals, conservative means" is my over-simplified definition. 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.
gumby 6y ago
The economist has several things going for it. For one, being a weekly newspaper they only write about things that are worth knowing about a week later. Second, they’d rather have a longer piece with analysis, generalization, and tying Disparate things together than a simple “this is what happened” 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
- sharatvir 6y ago
  I was a subscriber back in 2008-10 and then again from 2016-17. I found it odd that somewhere in the middle, they seemingly stopped (or slowed down) doing the special reports that were a deep dive on a big topic. Those were always my favorite parts of new editions.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > The economist has several things going for it. For one, being a weekly newspaper they only write about things that are worth knowing about a week later. 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-according-to-the-economist https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/liberalism-acc...
wuubuu 6y ago
Mr. Polazzo?
basch 6y ago
Ironically, John Micklethwait, came from The Economist. Was there from 1987, and Editor-in-Chief in 2006. The modern Bloomberg was an attempt to become The Economist.
frakkingcylons 6y ago
Agreed, Economist is quite good. Weekly publications tend to be more interesting in depth, I still find some of Businessweek's features to be worth reading. But I don't bother to keep up with daily news from most outlets as the SNR tends to be pretty low.
hogFeast 6y ago
The guy in the OP was one of the most legendary editors of the Economist (he has also written some very good books). 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.

by dade_ 6y ago

_jal 6y ago

I find that Economist articles about things I don't know much about are great. But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article. 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.

supernova87a 6y ago
I agree -- the Economist is the exact opposite of what Bloomberg is pointing out. They provide a few scant (or no) examples, and then oddly jump to extrapolating what we should do about the universe. They don't seem to build credibility within an article to make you think they should know what should be done on some specific issue. 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.
- antipaul 6y ago
  It looks like the Bloomberg editor in chief is actually the former editor of The Economist, though he switched 5 years ago 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-digital-editor-josh-topolsky-210295 https://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/07/bloomberg-fires...
razakel 6y ago
>But the more I know about the topic, the less I think of the article. 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."
- philipodonnell 6y ago
  wow
- the-pigeon 6y ago
  And IMO it's gotta much worse since Crichton said that do to online style publishing encouraging newspapers to be even looser with fact checkers and always trying to publish things ASAP over trying to publish something that is interesting, informative and/or factually corrective.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Some of it is rush to publish. But it's also that most readers here and elsewhere won't pay for subscriptions and will also do their best to avoid even the mediocre monetization provided by digital advertising. It's hard to support investigative reporting and fact checkers.
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      It's hard to support investigative reporting and fact checkers. When the bad drives out the good, it's no surprise that no one wants to pay for the bad.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bagacrap 6y ago
I have the same reaction to the stories on topics I'm familiar with, and it makes me distrust all the stories on other topics as well. There is a certain air or authority and erudition to the writing style, but I'm not sure it's warranted.

razakel 6y ago

Bill Gates has said The Economist is the only magazine he reads cover-to-cover as it makes him think critically about the world.

saagarjha 6y ago
Blindly following what Bill Gates says he does would be the opposite of thinking critically, however ;)
jjtheblunt 6y ago
when did he say that?
- KindOne 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/billgates/status/1022712786449846272 https://twitter.com/billgates/status/1022712786449846272 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 https://b-gat.es/2LTs1WM Jul 27, 2018

jgrahamc 6y ago

My tip for reading The Economist (I have a paper subscription) is to always start with the obituary. Their obituaries are wonderful.

Austin_Conlon 6y ago
Ann Wroe is an exceptional writer. My favorite obituary from that section is of a free diver: https://www.economist.com/obituary/2015/08/15/the-deepest-dive https://www.economist.com/obituary/2015/08/15/the-deepest-di....
cgh 6y ago
I do the same. I've often thought they should publish a book consisting solely of obituaries. As morbid as this sounds, it would be almost like a history of the last 100 years viewed through a very different lens.

amiga_500 6y ago

I find it to slavishly neoliberal. 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.

bryanlarsen 6y ago
I have the opposite experience. For example, they had a cover page article a about the global housing bubble in 2005. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2005/06/16/in-come-the-waves https://www.economist.com/special-report/2005/06/16/in-come-...
- amiga_500 6y ago
  It was crystal clear by 2005 that it was all going to pop. 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".
- hogFeast 6y ago
  You can go back further. They were writing articles about this in 03 and 04. They aren't right about everything but they will publish stuff about high valuations, etc. 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).
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    I think the Economist is pretty much the definition of neoliberal (in the old sense, before it acquired all the negative connotations). "Liberal goals, conservative means" is my over-simplified definition. 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.

gumby 6y ago

The economist has several things going for it. For one, being a weekly newspaper they only write about things that are worth knowing about a week later. Second, they’d rather have a longer piece with analysis, generalization, and tying Disparate things together than a simple “this is what happened” 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

sharatvir 6y ago
I was a subscriber back in 2008-10 and then again from 2016-17. I found it odd that somewhere in the middle, they seemingly stopped (or slowed down) doing the special reports that were a deep dive on a big topic. Those were always my favorite parts of new editions.
ardy42 6y ago
> The economist has several things going for it. For one, being a weekly newspaper they only write about things that are worth knowing about a week later. 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-according-to-the-economist https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/11/liberalism-acc...

wuubuu 6y ago

Mr. Polazzo?

basch 6y ago

Ironically, John Micklethwait, came from The Economist. Was there from 1987, and Editor-in-Chief in 2006. The modern Bloomberg was an attempt to become The Economist.

frakkingcylons 6y ago

Agreed, Economist is quite good. Weekly publications tend to be more interesting in depth, I still find some of Businessweek's features to be worth reading. But I don't bother to keep up with daily news from most outlets as the SNR tends to be pretty low.

hogFeast 6y ago

The guy in the OP was one of the most legendary editors of the Economist (he has also written some very good books). 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.