I've noticed that in The Economist the articles about my field of technology, work, and my small home country, have been accurate to the point that I suspect they have had experts in the field involved in creating them. That gives me confidence in the articles about issues I'm not intimately familiar with.
That is why The Economist is one of the few news sources I read after cutting out following daily news completely. As a result I'm much better informed about the facts and issues than I was when reading huge amounts of daily news. It boils down to a difference between consuming mostly noise and consuming mostly signal.
For instance, recently there was a writeup on quantum computing in which they made a somewhat hyperbolic claim regarding D-Wave. This gave me pause; however, the point was clarified in subsequent paragraphs, thus restoring my confidence in their analysis.
Much like the parent poster, I too have dropped many of my daily news sources, but not The Economist. I've yet to find a publication which matches it in terms of coverage and accuracy--not to mention their exceptionally high-quality audio recordings of each edition (perfect for commuting!).
Ive noticed the economist has a habit of playing policy games.
In that case they publish nonsense to further certain policy aims.
But often its well researched unbiased material.
not that easy to tell the difference.
but infinately better than the junk put out by the likes of the bbc fox cnn times etc.
But the nice thing about the newspaper (The Economist refers to itself as a newspaper, not a magazine) is that they provide pure opinion journalism and as a reader you know exactly where they are coming from.
While I agree a lot with the publication (for example: they argued to liberalize drugs, or advocated gay marriage literally decades before it was chic). I encounter my share of (what I lovingly refer to as) full-of-shit opinions, with which I wholeheartedly disagree.
Overall, though, it's one of the last remaining publications, on which I put a certain amount of trust because they usually know what they're writing about and even on the subjects on which I (partially vehemently) disagree it's always an interesting read.
Because they argue their position intelligently and competently. It won't make me a believer, but it's useful and interesting to get the counterpoint from a reputable and trustworthy publication and sometimes get your dogmas slightly shaken in the process.
I'm a long time subscriber to the Economist, ever since I was in high school. I appreciate their breadth of reporting and their commitment to provide opinionated takes on news while also giving a balanced take on news. Very few times have I felt the "Murray Gell-Mann effect" while reading it. I can recall just one instance they have been wrong about a topic I'm knowledgeable about. That's a better record than any other publication I read.
I stopped reading TE because I was put off by their too steadfast belief in monetarism as the be it end all. To their credit, they are pretty upfront about that though.
The times I read an Economist article about my country or my line of work the coverage was actually very good, but your milage may vary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance
In the past ten years it seems to have drifted gradually leftward. Sometimes I can't reconsile The Economist of 2000 with the one of 2016. Did The Economist move gradually to the left or did I move to the right?
The Economist were always Mill/Smith liberals, in favour of free trade, light but effective regulation, against the War on Drugs, pro-migration etc. They have a strong tendency to recommend economic liberalism regardless of what the problem is. These days the "right" have moved to "illiberal" positions - restricting free trade and migration. That may be what you're seeing.
My subscription is up in January, and -for the first time in 25 years- will NOT be renewed.
Because I cannot think of any publication that I would call completely impartial (it also would make for pretty dry reading).
The problem is that writing about 25 different countries in a single issue doesn't mean they actually have experts on most of those places or people on the ground to do original reporting. Often, it devolves into British or American writers regurgitating inaccurate information from the Internet. But if it's the only thing you read about, say, forest exports from Myanmar, you have no reason to question it.
The easiest way to see this is to be a non-US/UK/EU person and read an article in the Economist about your own country. Then you realize that all the other articles are just as simplistic and uninformed.