Should I start reading The Economist again?

Am I the only economist who does not read The Economist?  Well maybe the first one to confess to it. 

No, it is not because I am too busy and don't have the time.  It is a deliberate decision.  Call it a one-man boycott of ideology that masquerades too often as journalism.  

It wasn't always like that. In fact, I used to love the magazine and its opinionated style.  It was such a refreshing read after American media!  I loved it so much that I preferred buying it at the news stand at a higher price to subscribing, because I could get my hands on it faster that way.  When I spent a year out on the West Coast, my most important complaint was that The Economist arrived later there (on Mondays instead of Saturdays). 

But then I realized that the more I knew about a subject, the less The Economist was making sense.  Its one thing to be opinionated, another to be misinformed and arrogant at the same time.  After one too many articles in this mold, I simply stopped picking up the magazine.  I had a conversation recently with the new economics editor of the magazine (a KSG alum), who said I should take another look, but aside from an occasional thumbing through on a plane ride, I haven't done so.    

Yesterday a friend told me in the hallway that The Economist had quoted me in their current issue. I went online, and there it was, a quote from this blog that opens a longish piece on the rule of law and development.  But what struck me about the piece is how well it was done. Or how much I agreed with what was in there--which is another way of saying the same thing of course.  I thought the article got many of the nuances right, most importantly the distinction--which eludes many people still--between the role of institutions in the short- versus long-run. While institutions "rule" in the long run, in the short run there is a very weak relationship between economic growth and institutional reform.  It also has a very nice chart that superimposes the results of three academic papers on the relationship between the rule of law and long-run development:

      

So should I start reading The Economist again?

Oh, I dunno.  There is so much stuff to read these days...

Comments

[happyjuggler0]

Do you all realize you can get The Economist for free online, excepting some British stuff? And they usually set up online on Thursday US time.

As far as the quality of The Economist is concerned, I have two points to add. First, while it is not perfect, it can be a good starting point on a subject (e.g. the situation in Somalia) you are not too familiar with. Second, most print media simply royally suck on economic matters, so by comparison it is quite good.

[ozma]

I find http://www.dollarsandsense.org much more interesting.

[Jason]

The Economist has good stories about business and finance, plus the special reports are often quite good and interesting. I love their use of charts to explain data. That being said, I never read the opinion-oriented pieces towards the beginning because they are so shallow and ideological. And their coverage of the US is very weak. It's definitely worth reading, but not cover to cover.

[PK]

I skim through the conclusions-we already know their bias but their articles are well written, even if we disagree. I concur with some other posters-what do you suggest we read instead?

[DanielMittler]

Reading The Economist every week in my view is a necessary test for any progressive political activist to check that you are still smarter than the opposition. So, I recommend it. But if you do start reading it again, make sure you complain to the Economist about their lousy distribution. All this talk of efficiency and the market sorting things out. And they can't even get their magazine to subscribers on Friday (when it comes out in Britain) and when you change your address it takes weeks for the subscription department to realize. Is it The Economist quietly admitting to market failure? Or is it just, er, crap service?

[Casey]

I like The Economist, not necessarily because I agree or disagree with their opinions (it tends to be about 50-50) but I like the short, to the point articles, the broad range of topics they cover and how much information it contains for a weekly magazine. I never read it cover to cover, but its the perfect magazine to have sitting around when you want to kill a few minutes and get stories you would never see in Time or Newsweek.

[Barkley Rosser]

We share a subscription with a colleague. He reads it first, which means we get it late. This actually pushed me at least to only read the odd articles that are on areas I have not seen covered in other media. They do have a much broader global coverage than other US media, although the FT is certainly higher quality in general these days. They have been good on the financial market coverage also, and their Economic Focus some other special features are good. Of course one does not know if they are distorted on those stories about places one is not reading about elsewhere, but then, how does one find about places one is not normally following?

Of course their coverage of the US went into the toilet some years ago when they decided that they needed to kiss up to the right wing elite readers in the US. Just pathetic.

[Barkley Rosser]

My wife and I share a subscription with a colleague, who reads it first. So, I just look at the few stories that cover things I have not seen elsewhere, plus a few features that are good. They do still have broad coverage, although the FT is probably better now. As noted by others, the worst problem has been the abysmal character of the US political coverage, apparently driven by a decision to appeal to the elite right wing crowd in the US. But, heck, I don't read The Economist to follow US politics anyway.

[Jan Klingelhöfer]

Well,

I admit being annoyed by the economist from time to time

Well, is it surprising to be mostly disappointed by articles about things you know most about? Seems rather obvious to me that this has to be the case with almost every newspaper. I am often annoyed by their coverage of Germany (being German I believe to know a bit about my country even if I am living in Sweden), and yes, I have been wondering how serious I can take articles about let's say France that I cannot judge if they get Germany not right. However, of course I am very annoyed by what most German Newspapers write too. Moreover you have sometimes to adjust for limited knowledge of an international readership, so it is maybe acceptable to call the German Bundesrat an upper house of Parliament even if it is not a verry accurate description.

What else should I read? It is still by far the best Newspaper out there and there ideological biases are very transperent to every reader,so I don't have a problem with them. (by the way, I have rather a problem with their social liberalism and their pro-immigration bias, just for the record).

Despite all: I love it and the new audio edition is amazing (and there subscription service sucks big time)

[enigma_foundry]

No, you shouldn't start reading it again, but I do make the case that you look at it's pictures... http://enigmafoundry.wordpress.com/2006/09/13/great-cover-wrong-article/

[Jeff]

Why pay for the The Economist?

Isn't everything on the net for free?

[Oleg Volkov]

The term "transparency of the biases" recalls me some anecdotes of the Pravda readers from the dashed Soviet Union era.

Seriously, I believe that these new audio version is promoting itself as a a great ESL learning tool.
Surprisingly diverse contexts and gazillions of well-trained voices: What else do we, language students, need?!!

By the way, what does the word "branewoshing" mean?

[Francine]

The Economist's US coverage went downhill when they started "regionalizing" their editions and hiring a bunch of young neo-con twits from Dartmouth to write the articles to their perceived American audience. Ana has it right: read it backwards (and ignore the US news coverage).