It doesn’t have an euro focus though.

Just objectively that has turned out to be complete nonsense...

Rod Liddle - his brain is addled by the booze, but he still manages to phone in a few hundred words each fortnight.

If you're not reading Private Eye already I would highly recommend it.

This all just seems to be one more data point on the chart that shows our UK government to be quite fascist.

This has been clear for years, but perhaps there is a new urgency at the top to impress their new masters.

A lot of British comedians - at least those trying to be topical, frankly suck, with no obvious reason for their rise to fame over your average pub "wit" beyond plugging away, saying the right things, and being chums with the right people; the stronger shows succeeding despite their presence rather than because of them.

Through what mechanism is the BBC able to delay podcasts?

Knowing that informs you about the selection of topics they cover and the angles they will take. It doesn't make it bad - I read it for years although gave up mid-2010s - but it can be quite predictable. It's still capable of producing very high quality and thoughtful writing, which makes it more annoying when they choose not to.

Recommendation: maybe the FT?

I haven’t noticed a change other than a bit of a shift leftwards since Zanny became editor-in-chief, but I don’t mind one bit, as they haven’t lost the writers that promote classical liberalism, just added a bit of an internal critique of some aspects of academic economics.

But I’m very open to the idea that I’m missing something… especially since I’m such a fanboy!

That may just be selection bias of the articles I read.

They ( as many others ), didn't view Ukraine fighting back and Western help as a good thing, Ukraine capitulation was "the right thing to happen" because for them Russia controlling Ukraine was a "fact of life". All this while their authors try to project an image of unmatched economic prowess but also rock-solid morals..

https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/2022-04-02

When "nothing is gonna happen" and business was good, there was the need to "support"/sell Ukraine stuff. When shit got real "It was important for the World to don't confront Russia and let it be", when Russia flubbed the military support for Ukraine needed to be much more! more!.

I'm sure now that the war is extensive but also will be long, they'll try to push the "Listen.. you have to broke a deal with Putin."

Every take they had over the years is in line with pretty much every tabloid. My main criticism is they pretend they are something else, some high society deep thinkers, when in reality they are not. They've missed every economic crash and found every one of it the same way all the others did.

Nearly every issue since February this year has contained calls to support Ukraine, titles like "Why Ukraine must win" and so on. They're very hawkish pro a Ukraine all-out victory, often describing Ukraine as fighting for all of Europe's (or even the entire West's) freedom.

Just as an example, did you read the things Mearsheimer wrote?

Since this Economist thing has become a quagmire due to Ukraine ( my fault for bring it up ), I reiterate my point:

I don't really have anything against them, not even their biases. I do get pissed when they somehow ride their wave of superiority when in fact they are pretty much mainstream. Yeah, they are better than the DailyMail, but not by the amount they project.

Yes, the print edition. Care to actually rebuke my arguments instead of making assumptions?

> Just as an example, did you read the things Mearsheimer wrote?

I googled this because I was confused because I could not remember seeing his ideas there (which I remember finding totally ridiculous). Turns out this was a "by invitation" section, clearly presented as an outside opinion. I haven't seen them reiterate his ideas anywhere (which I'd summarize as "it's totally OK for powerful countries to scare neighbours into becoming 'buffer zone' client states without any say in the matter"), they're very much for Ukraine's ability to determine their own future.

If you're angry about a paper publishing opinion pieces you're going to be angry about just about every paper out there because every one of them is going to sooner or later publish an opinion piece that you disagree with. That's the whole idea of opinion sections.

I also loathe their coverage of the UK budget. It's a personally belief that George Osbourne's tenure in government has single-handedly sent the UK in a seemingly bottomless downward spiral back into 1970's Britain. He delivered his budget based on short-term fixes and populist gambits. The Economist talk about him and his policies as if he were some misunderstood hero of the age, and laud the absurd austerity measures of that government. Liz Truss recycles those same policies of tax cuts to the those who need it least, and the Economist does the same; that is, until the whole market finally comes crashing down. They back track as fast as they can, trying to distance themselves from her, talking about "how they would have done differently". It just seems so two-faced.

These are just a couple of examples but in summary, when their own fundamental beliefs are shown to fail, be it social or economic, they change tact so as to appear in the right instead of owning up and admitting any fault.

Also agree that a problem with The Economist is that it is always overtly pushing a particular view of the view world (rooted in a faith in the rationality of markets), which is coupled with fairly strong advice/prescriptions in much of the writing.

On the front page now:

1. Seven books that will make you smarter

2. Whoops, I Deleted My Life

3. How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?

4. The Strength of the ‘Soft Daddy’

5. The Black Investors Who Were Burned by Bitcoin

Etc.

These don't sound like articles that are worth my time. I did persevere with reading the magazine for quite a while out of habit but by now I'm pretty much convinced that most of these articles will be just as vapid as their titles.

I would definitely appreciate a quality/triviality filter though, maybe the print is the only way to get it.

I like The Atlantic in general, although I think they have a bit of what I sometimes call a "contrarian bias", e.g., prioritizing "the conventional wisdom is X, but here's why it's wrong" think-pieces even when their theses aren't particularly strong. (Slate and Salon were much worse about that in their heyday.)

Financial Times - lead newspaper into Wirecard scandal

Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German) - famed for Panama Papers investigation

I complement it with readings from:

IEEE Spectrum (Science & Tech)

The Markup (Society)

I think you're better off just getting access to specific long read articles when they're released.

In the past, even just the book reviews were so good that they "forced" me to buy 2-3 of the reviewed books; that issue didn't intrigue me. I don't have an answer whether it's a general trend or not, as I'm trained not to ascribe too much weight to a sample of size N=1.

There's probably nothing better regardless, but I, for one, would like to see an alternative that is at the same quality level as the Economist (but with more neutral reporting and individual author names given) and an even wider scope (health, science, society, technology, geopolitics, finance, law, ...).

I subscribed the Guardian for one year just to avoid that it goes down (I could read it for free at work), and of course it is excellent, but it has a tacit pro-UK bias that brits (esp. leftists) wouldn't even notice. On the other hand they have excellent reporting and do not refrain from the most challenging topics like the Snowdon revelation (first published by The Guardian's New York office, for legal - freedom of speech - reasons).

Germany has Der Spiegel, France has Le Monde Diplomatique, but I think only the latter is available in English (I read German).

I would also enjoy paying for a single subscription that gave me online access to several of these top-tier magazine for a single flat-rate monthly or annual subscription price.

More publications should remove the byline. Individual attribution incentivises journalists to try and stand out which typically means making intentionally inflammatory statements.

Media owners want this. They want journalism to be commodities because journalists with reputations can demand higher pay. They can then claim more of the profit.

The losers are the readers and the journalists.

In a sense it's the same process that is turning amazon products into shit. Without trustworthy reputation signals, the lowest common denominator rules.

Or...journalists without a byline have little incentive to "build up a brand" through by appealing to a "side" or sketchy reporting. It cuts both ways.

Taking away bylines simply takes away the incentive to actually be different and stand out for something else.

I think the biggest predictor if quality writing is the business model of the publication. Subscription based content is almost always superior. Anything that relies entirely on ad revenue is general hot garbage.

A good way to see that it's not is to find out what investors or beltway policy elites would think and hunt for (entirely factual) things which might contradict their narrative.

I cited an example below of an article about github copilot that was hot garbage - like a starry eyed intern had watched an investor pitch.

On the war front one of the things which I have read in milbloggers is that a key goal of Russia's bombardment of the electricity network is to inhibit Ukrainian rail logistics and prevent the front from being resupplied. Is it working? Well, it was only ever "meant" to crack Ukrainian morale so they wouldnt even think to analyze that.

(good military reporting ought to have a bias towards logistics)

The end goal is to undermine international support for Ukraine.

While Le Diplo's writers are usually top rate and the international outlook extraordinary for a French publication, the caricatural "anticapitalist" and anti-USA stance tint it too much to my taste - and I'm saying that as a French socialist !

[1] https://www.sofoot.com/

  >I subscribed the Guardian for one year just to avoid that it goes down (I could read it for free at work), and of course it is excellent, but it has a tacit pro-UK bias that brits (esp. leftists) wouldn't even notice. On the other hand they have excellent reporting and do not refrain from the most challenging topics...

When I originally used to read The 'Graun' back in the 80s 90s, it was a crusading paper which did cover 'challenging topics' --such as Britain's role in Northern Ireland, US bases in Europe, Britain's membership of NATO, nuclear disarmament, class struggle, etc. etc. ie. proper socialist politics.

Now, whenever I look at their website all I see are endless articles about racism, hompophobia, transgenderism... whether what X said on Twitter was racist... whether Y's opinion on sport is transgenderist etc. etc. Issues which the current crop of Guardian journalists probably think are terrifically 'crusading' and 'challenging' but which are just pushing at the same open door as every other 'right on' publication and website around and which I find tedious beyond measure. Virtue signalling trivia masquerading as crusading journalism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurring_jokes_in_Private_Eye

First, I find they did not explain their model well. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Second, the correlation does not imply causation or whether extrapolations are solid. It looks like there might be mistakes on that front and there are many spurious correlations (e.g. high energy in the past might mean high unemployment).

Third, so far the country experiencing freezing is the Ukraine due to power outages. Just one sentence mentioning, whether in Ukraine for sure many people are going to die due to distrusted power, heating or water supplies.

So far on general economics, I love: https://noahpinion.substack.com/

Though, it is hard for me to find comprehensive Economist replacement.

I will say that generally, non-print media like Substack, personal blogs and Twitter can be a much higher quality replacement. Requires a little digging though.

I've seen some reporters go from working at a "big" publisher to Substack and I can tell the difference in their writing. Usually more extreme and alarmist. I chalk it up to less review.

Its the difference between a university debate club and an MMA cage. The MMA filter is much stronger, but there tends to be a lot more blood.

Even here, inaccuracies are promoted as fact regularly. I don't count on the social media herd as a compass.

Other than this site I avoid news that comes with a comment section because internet anons have their own biases and agendas and aren't representative.

You end up with nuance swept aside and extreme unflinching loudmouths getting the most visibility. A lot of this goes hand in hand with quitting social media.

It's not an extraordinary claim tho. Literally, every year old people die because of cold weather and not being able to afford the proper heating. This is basically old news. The cost of living "crisis" means that the price of energy is not becoming a matter for the average working person. This isn't really extraorinary to claim since salaries aren't exactly high and many people struggle to pay their bills by default with the price of food, energy, etc all going up while their salaries aren't going up then it clearly means some people will struggle to pay for the heating.

Article shows some modelling, but I was not convinced and can point some holes: https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/2022/11...

Yes, but the problem is not explaining that people aren't dying because of the cold itself. The way you wrote this and the way the media portrays the problem makes it sound like people will die from freezing to death, which is just not true.

Pretty much all reporting forgets to add the nuance that deaths in colder months increase because:

1. If it is colder, people are more likely to stay indoors and that increases viral infections

2. Cold makes our immune systems not work as well, which increases the chances of serious complications from infections

3. Cold environments keep viruses around for longer.

4. Cold weather also causes blood to thicken, which can lead to an increased chance of things like strokes (which then lead to higher death rates).

This is the nuance that reporting feels to present.

This is true. Old people freeze to death every year.

It's 100% true in my part of the US.

I haven't seen the article, but it's not a _completely_ outlandish idea; consumer energy prices are up a lot, and in countries where governments haven't taken step to subsidise and/or control energy costs, particularly for elderly people, you would expect deaths.

Now, in practice most countries _have_ taken such steps; if that was left out of the article that would certainly be a concern.

This complaint is one that (jokingly) makes me ask if you're new around here. the Economist is almost pathologically pessimist. I sometimes think they should call themselves _The Cassandra_, as they are constantly forecasting doom over every scenario.

I enjoy how they summarize background information and the candor of their analysis, but when it gets time to make long-term predictions I tune them out because they're about 0-50 on the number of times I should have been walking knee deep through rivers of bodies and economic collapse.

There are undoubtedly good reasons out there to fear or be angry about but I just had to stop with The Atlantic.

They do still have some great posts. I just avoid reading their homepage and only go there if linked to a post by a trusted source.

If nothing else, the pain they put me through to end the subscription was enough to prevent me from ever signing up again.

I'm paying everyone via paypal and just cancel the paypal subscription without ever bothering replying to any email. That works wonders :-)

And wasn't there a law (in EU) that signing up should be as easy and cancelling, if anyone remembers. Most of them allow signup via website but ask you to call to cancel (even after cancelling online, SZ).

I say this as a previous subscriber to FAZ, SZ, and the Economist.

My county’s libraries use Libby, and I get to read The Economist and many other magazine ‘for free’ (reality is my council and other taxes pay for it but you get my drift)

Probably something that is not in English language, since those usually have huge US or UK focus. (Even news like politico.eu are mostly about UK).

I share your sentiment re Economist.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/

Fortunately, Western media (at least) is flush with Classical Liberal POV. So it's not like I suffered from the omission.

As for challenging and interesting and immediately relevant, I keep returning to David Roberts' Volts podcast. Explains where the rubber meets the road on the most important topic of the day, climate crisis. The explainers are just terrific. The episodes about the US's Inflation Reduction Act, the most important industrial policy legislation in a generation, have been illuminating. https://www.volts.wtf

As for a non-center-right take on economic issues, I'm enjoying Bethany McLean's work. Currently her podcast Capitalisn't. https://www.capitalisnt.com (Her cohost Luigi Zingales is mostly a dink, so I mostly speed thru his monologuing.)

I haven't really found a leftist economics narrative to consume. Two years ago, I binged on some MMT stuff. Alas, it still feels too fledgling, too exploratory. In short, I'm eager for narratives with some predictive power.

I'm almost certain u/dredmorbius can offer awesome recommendations. Their smart about about this kind of stuff.

Oh. The books Mine: The Hidden Rules of Ownership and Debt: The First 5000 Years were fun. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54226795-mine https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6617037-debt Sadly, I haven't gotten to Piketty's books yet.

*They're smart

This chart shows FP as a more factual, slightly closer to the Center than The Economist (EDIT: Wrong)

https://www.datawrapper.de/_/rrzFK/

Source for the chart: https://www.thefactual.com/blog/is-foreign-policy-magazine-r...

EDIT: I misunderstood the chart. It shows FP as more factual and slightly more opinionated than The Economist, while labelling both as "Center" (without relative comparisons) ideologically.

The center of US political debate is significantly to the right of Europe on a large set of topics (from the role of the State in economic matters to global issues like Israel's behaviour).

Wait for it... Dang is gonna ban me again. BUT I'M DRUNK! Damn it.

I didn't put Al Jazeera because I would be against an Qatari monarchist perspective.

Bending facts, rather than reporting them and then commenting on them, is not "perspective" except in the most recent and/or Orwellian sense of the word.

Which values? I find it to be very analytic and dry in a good way.

Added bonus: you can have X and anti-X perspectives for most values of X.

For example, the recent Economist article "In Ukraine, living as normal is an act of defiance"[1] presents a view of everyday civilian life in Kyiv but offers no references or links to anything of substance.

This article would be much more useful and interesting if it provided references, data (as opposed to anecdotes from interviews of a few people) and visual information at both macro and micro levels. For example, the following types of information could be useful in answering the question of "what is life currently like in Kyiv?":

1. A picture showing the rate of growth of "Point of Unbreakability" sites across Ukraine[2] alongside links to videos of a few sites being toured (to show an example of what they typically look like).

2. A link to daily reports on the Ukraine energy grids[3] and a graphical map of changes in energy availability over time.

3. Recent walking tours of Ukrainian cities.

4. A link to retail pricing and availability of a generator or typical basket of groceries and a graph showing changes over time. Or a video tour of typical supermarkets or retail outlets showing the effect of the war on supply of goods[4][5].

Some journalists at media outlets do provide well researched articles from time to time filled with graphs, maps and tables of data[6] but they still generally don't add references and photos/videos. I find this is particularly true for articles that frustratingly claim "New research from the University of Something shows ..." yet there is no mention of the paper title or link to the article in an open journal. Or any reporting on legislation or legal matters--would it be so difficult to link to case information on a court system, link to a bill presented before parliament, etc?

[1] https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/11/23/in-ukraine-livin...

[2] https://nezlamnist-gov-ua.translate.goog/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_t...

[3] https://dixigroup.org/en/analytic/russian-war-against-ukrain...

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzO0ikUcL-c

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzsEdRLML5E

[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-10-19/maplab... (example relating to how some media outlets have been using satellite imagery during the Ukraine war, also see 'Map Links' at the bottom for more examples)

https://www.theatlantic.com/

Most of their talented contributors are mostly gone, and the current crop of “cool kid” writers seem to just regurgitate what they are following on Twitter.

She's also been friends and sometimes business partners for decades with Carlos Watson, the guy who perpetrated the OZY fraud. That may help if you want an idea of her taste in, and ability to evaluate the quality of, journalism.

Become a tech company, like the NY Times (separate subscriptions for cooking & games, affiliate via Wirecutter, get into podcasts, newsletters, etc.) - they've kind of Buzzfeed-ified themselves.

Or get a rich patron. The latter has worked for decades for money-losing conservative journals. (For interesting anecdata about one of them, check out this analysis of Commentary: https://danielstone.substack.com/p/commentary-finances-john-...)

https://www.motherjones.com/

The writing has always been center-left, but with introspective tendencies. Articles would generally critique conservative political positions, but thoughtfully in a well-reasoned manner. And they would be just as likely to examine excesses from the cultural left also.

After Trump entered office, the magazine began a rapid descent. Today you find as much "clickbait" in the printed magazine as you do on the web property (they were previously quite distinct). Articles are frequently hyperbolic, and read like Reddit comments on /r/LateStageCapitalism. But most damningly, the REASONING seems to be gone now. It feels like reading a propaganda outlet.

Maybe this is an artifact of emerging authors coming of age during the social media era? Maybe it's a byproduct of print media's financial decline, and pressure to compete with online entertainment? Whatever the case may be, everything feels like a lazy echo chamber now. I dearly miss writing that makes me think.

I tend to read authors instead of publications now.

Like just about anything by Ed Yong (science), Zeynep Tufekci, Katelyn Jetelina when looking at pandemic related topics. They are objective, thoughtful, compassionate, and well researched.

But slowly finding writers like that for other topics. Open to suggestions!

It'd probably be FT for me, they follow a "just the facts" approach mostly.

When people say that the quality of a publication has declined they often mean they disagree with things that are published. Many also say that they seek out blogs and other sources that I assume they agree with.

I read these publications because I often disagree with their opinion pieces. It's a value add. Why would I pay to read my own views regurgitated? It's a danger inherent in trying to micromanage and curate a very narrow source of information. You end up only ingesting things that you agree with.

My 2 cents. Sorry for the big edit

I put the Jacobin explicitly because I wanted to make it explicitly clear that I'm open to the whole political spectrum. I've read some good articles on there, as well as bad. I'm happy to be convinced out of subscribing to it. I've had a lot of people say it's a rag, but not explain how. Is it because it's poor journalism, or is it because it's socialist?

And no, it's not that I'm looking for validation of my own opinions. That's why I've put it out to a forum and not just picked the one most appealing to me.

Anecdotally, I'm in sympathy with a lot of Jacobin's political viewpoints (even though I'm not as anti-capitalist, or at least anti-market, as they seem to be), but I have a lot of trouble really clicking with their style. They're far more opinion-driven than The Economist or even The Atlantic, and there's what I can only describe as a sneering subtext to much of the work by them I've been pointed to, e.g., "this premise is plainly true to anyone who isn't stupid and/or evil", when I'm sort of mentally raising my hand and going "wait, you are skipping work you really need to dedicate at least a few paragraphs to." It's the leftist version of the feeling I got reading C.S. Lewis decades ago.

You are dead on. I often sympathize and appreciate the core of their message but the presentation is off putting, to me anyway.

It isn’t trying to be a publication that sounds smart or pretends to be unbiased, but that is the expectation most people have from economic and political writing. That plus the obvious political position makes it unpopular, but I’d argue the quality is just as good as any other major publication.

I’d say it’s important to keep it in your mix because you’re just not going to find views or analysis from that perspective otherwise.

This is pretty standard. If I wanna know what investors or beltway insiders are excited or afraid about I read the Economist. If I want to learn about real things in the real world I read something else.

Jacobin has the kind of rep (or worse) that the Economist should have, but elites and investors have better PR than trade unionists and anti Iraq war protestors.

> a rag like Jacobin

One of the most frustrating obstacles in this conversation is people believing that being in the middle of the Overton Window makes you non-ideological. The idea of being ideological is offensive to people who believe that their view isn’t, which ironically is the hallmark of successful ideology. I’d point to Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher for further elaboration.

This reminds me of the David Foster Wallace joke of the fish who reply to “How’s the water?” with “What the hell is water?”

https://quillette.com/author/niranjan/

But I would point you to the fact that they have Rod Liddle (lefty/Social Democrat) and Matthew Parris (Tory who hates Brexit) as regular columnists.

IMHO it never makes sense to measure media's bias from right to left but it makes even less sense when the power center they represent is so obvious.

It's like arguing whether RT is conservative because they like Trump or liberal because they are skeptical of Israel. RT is simply pro Russia above all and will turn on a dime on any issue if it serves their core master.

Epoch Times is the most objective news outlet I've been able to find - actually reporting the news for what it is. Not censoring out stories it doesn't like, etc. If anyone knows of a more objective outlet, please let me know.

I'm just going to throw it out there that maybe your political values are beginning to overwhelm your other opinions?

The Economist's content is unique outside of, maybe, the Financial Times in your list. You're certainly not going to find much similarity with The Jacobin, they're polar opposites politically.

The best replacement for The Economist is probably a major newspaper.

I take the same view in subscribing to Private Eye.

You can always follow them instead of following the publication.

If they're still there, then perhaps it's a sign that it's management

You're not suggesting otherwise but I feel compelled to mention it anyway for completeness: every publication has a political bent. It's not just the editorials or even the reporting itself but also the choice on what to publish. That's not neccessarily a bad thing unless that political bent means the publication has a tenuous relationship with the truth.

I'm curious what political stance you have an issue with, as in are you more left-leaning or right-leaning.

The Economist falls into the same bucket I'd put some other long-form print media in like the Atlantic and the New Yorker: it's center-right, specifically neoliberal. That's not necessarily bad. In fact I'd read good content in all 3 of these. You just need to be aware of the lens through which they see the world. The Economist I always found to be pro-Europe (pro-EU and pro-NATO) as one example.

Some might object to the "center-right" label here. To me, that's just evidence of how far the pendulum has swung with the Overton Window in how far right-wing politics currently skews, not just in the US. CNN is a center-right media outlet, for example. Coverage of Israel-Palestine is a prime example of just how one-sided this is.

More progressive media outlets are slim pickings honestly. For general news coverage, within limits surprisingly al-Jazeera ranks pretty highly. I say "within limits" because it has the same blind spot all state media does: the state it represents. The BBC is another prime example of this.

The Economist is aware of the failures of markets, in favour of drug legalisation, gay marriage, gun control, measures to curb climate change (they've called for a carbon tax from 1987 onwards), and has endorsed the Democrat rather than Republican candidate in 6 of the last 8 US presidential elections.

This attempts to use capitalism to solve a global problem. That’s the hallmark of neoliberalism: the undying faith in capitalism or simply taking it as axiomatic.

The good thing about Financial Times: It is a UK publisher, not US-based, so the reporting on the US is more skeptical and nuanced. Less screechy. To be fair, I avoid almost all of the opinion pieces except for Martin Wolf, because he is basically writing an economics column. The rest is rather inflammatory (much lower editorial standards!) and can can readily be skipped.

Also consider the free FT AlphaVille which is a blog attached to FT. Much more casual reporting style, but they have cracked some big cases, including Dan Mccrum's year-long (later explosive) investigation into Wirecard.

Than what? The Economist is UK based too.

The Economist tends to favor the US because the Economist supports liberal democracy and free trade worldwide. The Unites States is the only country who can and does defend those values. Europe cannot arm Ukraine against Putin. Japan cannot dispute China's claims rights to Taiwan or the ocean.

I'd look into Swiss or French publications. Although most of the French media has also unfortunately been pretty streamlined.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius#Fabrication_of_...

What's the bigger blocker for me is the anti-LGBT+ lean. For example the most recent article on trans rights: November 19th - 25th 2022 issue, "Transgressions", page 29 in print. It's not even the insidious "see both sides" argument you see often, but just unbalanced rehash of old claims with no analysis, research, or further thought. In the same issue, The Economist jumped to the defence of Qatar (“In defence of Qtar”, page 18 in print) with the argument that while Qutar was terrible for LGBT+ rights, so have been pervious world cup holders. To me that’s not even an argument, that’s just a defeatist “oh well it was bad before so why bother complaining”.

I’m all for accepting viewpoints that are different from my own, but when it comes to “should LGBT+ people have rights” that’s not up for debate.

I cancelled my subscription quite a few years ago in light of the low quality of analysis in the UK section of the paper - it felt like tabloid journalism aimed at people who thought too highly of their class status and level of education to deign to read a real tabloid, yet essentially at the same level of insight, peppered with a few affected rhetorical flourishes conveying an aesthetic of educated sophistication.

It’s very much a newspaper designed to give people without the time or inclination to develop a substantial understanding of an issue a quite superficial overview, packaged alongside an opinion that can be regurgitated as required to give the impression that one has a respectable understanding of the matter in question (at the very least, outside some of its more detailed feature articles).

…Even in light of that, the rapidity of the decline in its coverage of LGBT+ human rights has been extraordinary, even by UK standards. The fact that prominent editorial staff at the newspaper (Helen Joyce, for one) are extremely prominent anti-transgender activists probably has something to do with it - but the sheer venom of its coverage really took me aback when I started following its current turn. The issue certainly isn’t specific to it, given the broader anti-trans/LGBT+ turn in the UK press as a whole, but the Economist stands out as one of the worst for it.

Lately I've enjoyed Politico for at least sometimes sharing this ambition. It's very US-centric, even in the Politico EU variant, but there's far less national exceptionalism than its peers in my opinion.

I completely agree that the Economist has been slowly declining in quality over the last decade, which saddens me. Clickbaiting is a universal problem now, and I don't think there's any direct competitor that's better. I've come to terms with diversifying my reading list and reading much less of each instead.

https://asiatimes.com/ in english, mostly free

https://www.jeuneafrique.com/ in french, subscription

E: It is basically a somewhat long list of newspapers and periodicals from across the world.

https://evonomics.com/

Bills itself as the next evolution of Economics and "Changes in economic thinking can change the world, for the better. That’s the core belief that inspires Evonomics"

Here's a story by Tim O'Reilly about Elon Musk:

Why Elon Musk Isn’t Superman : The Betting Economy vs. The Operating Economy

https://evonomics.com/why-elon-musk-isnt-superman/

So too with The Economist, not to speak of things like The Atlantic etc., who rely mostly on opinion or tenuous data.

Now, often The Economist tries to rely on some science/data but they have their own ideology and that leads to them making mistakes as well. I wish they relied more on science and data over ideology (such as free markets or globalization, etc., not to say those are bad, but just have some skepticism and criticism. They often took globalization to be an unqualified good)

Weirdly, I've recently been experiencing this with Twitter. Every opinion unfolds mechanically. Even the curve balls are predictable at a statistical level.

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And it baffles me because, having read it for 20+ years and gone back for research to read plenty of articles from further back... I just don't see it at all.

It's the same market-based, socially progressive, pragmatic international strongly opinionated journalism it's always been. Sometimes I think the way it characterizes something is missing part of the full picture, but it's always been that way. Journalists are fallible humans, they aren't gods, and it's not like there was some mythical past where they always got things right.

I can totally understand people not enjoying it as much as they grow older, simply because you come to mistrust journalism more in general, or shift in your ideological viewpoint so it becomes less agreeable. Readers change.

But I'm getting tired of this trope that it's the Economist that's been changing, that's been getting worse. It just doesn't make any sense. It's the same journalism it's always been. For every article you take issue with, I'm sure you'd find just as many from 20 or 30 years ago.

I suppose it's just part of a general narrative of declinism, how everything used to be so much better and the world is crumbling. But in this case, I just don't see it. You might not like the magazine anymore and that's fine, but I think there's a good chance it's you who has changed, not the magazine.

I carefully read articles about my country to check for inaccuracies, and sometimes ask people from other countries about other articles. The result of these checks is always the same: the journalism is solid, facts are presented well, the articles are always slightly condescending and overuse the word "should". If the "shouldism" annoys you, you can always easily skip these parts.

I continue to subscribe, because it's pretty much the only thing out there.

In areas where I have some knowledge (tech), I find The Economist has reasonably accurate (if perhaps simplified, for the wider audience) grasp of things. I trust that the same holds for the other areas.

The quality of decline has really gone downhill in the last few years. Used to be that when things fell apart, they really fell apart (think revolution, collapse) but now they just peter out.

We’re gonna start declining again. We’re gonna decline so much. We’re gonna decline at every level. We’re gonna decline economically. We’re gonna decline with the economy. We’re gonna decline with military. We’re gonna decline with healthcare and for our veterans. We’re gonna decline with every single facet.

We’re gonna decline so much you may even get tired of declining. And you’ll say “Please! Please! It’s too much declining! We can’t take it anymore. Mr President, it’s too much!”

And he’ll say “No it isn’t. We have to keep declining. We have to decline MORE! We’re gonna decline MORE! We’re gonna decline so much! I love you America. You’re gonna be so happy!”

Ahh yes. Soon. Soon.

I don't hold it against them, really; it's a business, and modern journalism relies on maintaining relationships with sources, who are often government officials and agencies. It's not too hard to recognize the stuff that gets published "defensively" once you're used to that.

If you are going to cover a topic deeply better cover all sides of it rather than just a criticism piece or a puff piece. This is what Keeps me coming back to economist.

The right has moved far more than the left. Just looking at today's news, we find a prominent right-wing activist was convicted of plotting to overthrow the government: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63802649

The only area I think you could unequivocally say the US left has progressed on is civil rights for LGBT+ people. But in terms of things like labor rights, a social safety net, environmental conservation, gun control, election integrity, and business regulation, I'd say the center of the US left hasn't moved much in decades, much to the frustration of the more activist portion of the left. Note that people from other countries often see the Democratic Party as a center-right party.

Further, I think the Pew stuff is flawed in a number of ways. One, it comes after the Reagan era, missing a time DW-NOMINATE shows as important to right-wing polarization. Two, it doesn't include the Trump era, when polarization hugely spiked. Third, and most important, 9 out of the 10 questions are not suited for directly measuring ideology. The one I think is actually a decent measure of ideology is "Homosexuality should be discouraged by society" vs "Homosexuality should be accepted by society". The rest of them are practical questions relative to the circumstances of the day. E.g., "The government today can't afford to do much more to help the needy" is a question that's explicitly about the current state of the budget. If the budget improves, then more people should answer that as yes regardless of ideology.

The measure I'd rather see is the extent of ideological litmus tests for access to power. E.g., look at the way the right's orthodoxy on abortion has hardened over the years. In the 1970s it was possible to be a pro-choice Republican and a pro-choice evangelical Christian. Now neither is acceptable, so much so that the most prominent Republican pro-choice group just gave up a few years back: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/24/opinion/abortion-rights-r...

Or you could look at the way large portions of the Republican party have polarized around things that are provably false, like that Trump won the 2020 election, that January 6th was a left-wing false flag, or that ivermetcin is a good way to treat covid. That is wildly asymmetrical polarization, and it drove litmus tests for Republican candidates across the country. Nothing similar exists on the left.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOMINATE_(scaling_method)#/med...

And 1/2 of the US has ideas that do not match the current left.

I've always been a classical liberal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

These values are unthinkable for progressives today.

I've got racks of magazines saved from those 10 years. Flicking back through now and comparing their critique on the EU say, versus 7 years ago, is like chalk and cheese. I'm not sure whether it was Brexit, Trumpism, the new wave of journalism from Vice/Buzzfeed and the like, or journalism's growing obsession with Twitter that caused this strange shift in writing style and substance, but I can physically see the disparity before my eyes now; hence the original post.

I'd doubt my opinion on the matter if, like you rightly put, my viewpoint could be seen shifted over time. But I still read and enjoy the same suite of news and articles that I always have in every other case. I'm not looking for a replacement to them. The Economist is an exception in my case, not the norm. If it was generic declinism, I'd be seeing fault in all of my inputs. As it stands, I'm only seeing it in the Economist. Perhaps it's because it's the one I'm so intimately familiar with. Equally, it's possible that the quality has changed. Maybe there's a good chance you're unable to see it because you've changed in tandem with the magazine, not kept to your own path.

We live in an age of increasing polarization. Asymmetric polarization, I should add; look at how the US House has changed since 1980 or so: https://xkcd.com/1127/large/

The Economist has long been attempting to straddle common political divides even as those divides grow larger. This has been causing fragmentation everywhere. Look, for example, at the Libertarian party in America, which is falling apart right now [1] as they drop antisemitic memes [2] and say it's fine.

All of this is happening at the same time they've shifted from a weekly cadence to continuous publishing, meaning less time to ponder, with a significant expansion in volume of content.

I think they're doing a decent job of keeping it together, but the cracks are showing. E.g., their "by invitation" pieces are by nature platforming people and avoiding most of their editorial standards. They are surely cheap to produce and good clickbait, but I think it's a mistake. I also see right-wing framings creeping into pieces more often than before.

Admittedly, it's a hard problem. When the leader of the Republican party is supping with bigots [3], there's no longer a clear line between mainstream views and the awful fringe. So I'm still subscribing and I hope they work it out. But I also wouldn't mind finding some alternatives these days so that if things get worse, I have options.

[1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/libertarian-party-is-fighting-...

[2] https://boingboing.net/2022/11/15/libertarian-party-embraces...

[3] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=trump+k...

> I also see right-wing framings creeping into pieces more often than before.

There we go, you think its worse because it doesn't 100% cater to your views.

But the US right has from my perspective gone insane. Take as an example the belief that Trump won the 2020 election. A majority of Republicans (and only Republicans, not independents, Democrats, or people outside the US) believe that Joe Biden did not legitimately win: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/01/07/republica...

And unfortunately, it's not confined to the US. From Boris Johnson to Jair Bolsonaro to Viktor Orban and well beyond, there are a lot of politicians on the right who you can't really call conservative in that they, like Trump, have repudiated a lot of traditional conservative values like honesty, accuracy, and integrity.

My problem is that the Economist, whose tone for me has always been one of cool reason, whose founding goal was "to take part in 'a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress,'" is letting the crazy leak in.

As I said, it's a hard problem to stay balanced in unbalanced times, so I have sympathy for them. But that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend the problem doesn't exist.

> My problem is that the Economist, whose tone for me has always been one of cool reason, whose founding goal was "to take part in 'a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress,'" is letting the crazy leak in.

I'm really not sure what you're getting at here. It honestly makes me wonder if you've actually read The Economist in the past 7 years.

The Economist is very critical of Boris Johnson - their latest articles on him include "The tragedy of Boris Johnson", "Boris Johnson should go immediately" and "Clownfall: Britain after Boris".

Recent pieces on Jair Bolsonaro include "The enduring threat of Jair Bolsonaro", "Win or lose, Jair Bolsonaro poses a threat to Brazilian democracy" and "President Jair Bolsonaro is bad for Brazil's economy".

On Viktor Orban they say "Viktor Orban's victory is a triumph for illiberal nationalism", "How Viktor Orban hollowed out Hungary's democracy".

On Trump I won't even begin. Almost no publication has been more harshly critical of Trump.

So your claim that The Economist is determined to "both-sides" every discussion doesn't hold any water at all to me. The Economist has always had an open and transparent editorial position and they write to that position. They are not interested in promoting the views of extremists or crazies on either side. If you have such an example I would be keen to hear it.

This is not a claim I made. And you generally don't seem to have come to grips with my point.

I think both parties have gone insane and have been there for many years. The US system has been unbalanced and wobbly for years. While the problem is much worse on the right as of late, the corrosion of our electoral system is strong and alive on the left as well. The incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries repeatedly said that the election was stolen by Trump and that his presidency is illegitimate. [0] Honestly, this tweet written by Jeffries reads exactly like an unhinged Trump Twitter rant. [1] The claims that the election was stolen was repeated publicly by Hillary Clinton, then the defacto leader of the party. Going further back, there are Democrats who still say that the election was stolen from Al Gore, which is a ridiculous claim. To be clear, Trump takes these assaults on our democratic institutions to an entirely different level and breadth, but let's look at this from both sides instead of asserting that it's just one side.

[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/election-denier-hake...

[1] https://twitter.com/RepJeffries/status/964581721088897025?s=...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/washington-examiner/

One might do well to research the roots of "progressivism"; it's a very nice sounding word with some really evil origins, and the confusing thing is, it's evolutionary existence across decades has states where it was more good than evil.

It’s like watching a movie where you only ever see the good side of the hero. Viewers do not want you to change their mind half way through or cause them to be confused by the muddy reality of things.

My view is that Western Europe has become less relevant to North American culture, technology, and finance over the past five or so years. Latin America and Asia are now far more relevant to North American life and the future thereof.

I share your thoughts about the Economist and I feel it has gone downhill. I wonder how much of that is due to the cultural and economic decline of the UK and the public narrative shift accompanying that decline. Brexit brought some very unsavory and counterproductive sentiments to the fore.

As a specific example, them calling whatever the Trump supporters say about the 2020 elections as the "Big Lie", capitalised, it's something that they wouldn't have done ~10 years ago. I'm talking about the same magazine that had a 3-page mostly congratulatory article on Blair long after the start of the Iraq war (I'd say around 2010-2012). They didn't capitalised any "L-s" in "lies" back then, I'm not even sure they called out Blair as being a liar.

As an answer to your specific question, for the moment I'm also trying out Foreign Affairs. They're even more ideologically one-sided than The Economist, but at least in their case they wear their ideology on their sleeve, so to speak, which makes it more bearable for me to read them. Their book reviews (including the longer "review essays", as they call them) though are less ideologically one-sided, or at least so I found them, and imo they're intellectually worth more than many of the featured articles.

For example the September-October issue has this excellent review called: "Old World Order - The Real Origin of International Relations" [1], commenting on a book called "Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders" [2], which presented the "birth" of international relations via Mongol rule in most of Eurasia starting with the 1200s. In so doing it also makes some passing references to Russians Eurasians like Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Vernadsky or Gumilyov, and what their writings and theories might mean for modern Russia. Really interesting stuff and pretty on point, which stuff I didn't see mentioned in almost any issue of The Economist (where the underlying belief is that the West is fighting the Russian Asiatic Horde, and they leave it at that).

I've also been a FT reader for 20 years, again, with big on-an-off periods, but, the same as with The Economist, I found that their biases have changed quite a lot, in a way that I don't like (there are exceptions, like Martin Wolf, with whom I mostly don't agree on a political level but which has been mostly on point, plus their finance-related reporting is really good, at least for non-experts like me).

[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/old-world-order

[2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/before-the-west/78E4B5C...

I noticed this both during covid and Ukraine coverage. The quality of journalism that is now available online is in my opinion much greater than any news organisation can put out. Often because the amateur journalist are people covering event from on the ground as it is happening.

I see that you're UK based -- If you still have an active UK university email, you can usually get a subscription for free. See this page for details: https://enterprise.ft.com/ft-education-resources/licence-fin...

They tend to have excellent data-driven reporting, and substantive articles.

As to OPs question, I typically try to use an array of sources for news and try to support publications that I cannot access freely / through other means or feel strongly about supporting (such as local news and publications like Harpers).

Sadly, my library system's collection of Switch games is missing the Kibry franchise. But it does have Smash Bros which has been a lot of fun.

Also, if you live near the border of a state with a better library system than yours, check if you can get a non-resident library card (you may have to pay).

Also, if you have young children, check out https://imaginationlibrary.com/ from Dolly Parton. It's a free program that will mail your child a free book every month up until their 5th birthday.

They don't write their articles, but translate into Dutch news articles from all over the world. It really makes for high-quality reading.

  [1] https://www.360magazine.nl

Aside from the FT,

Read the BoE/ECB publications.

Follow topics you're interested in via REPEC https://ideas.repec.org/services.html - see subscription options at the base of the page.

Follow the econ Mastodon econtwitter.net

They provide actual reporting and not just narrative; WSJ reporting broke the news of the Theranos fraud for example.

The New Statesman isn't bad but has some problems: delivery delays to the US (maybe not an issue for you) and lots of "advertorials". The writing quality is usually good. It has a left/labour leaning.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/

I’ve also enjoy Adam tooze’s newsletter after seeing it crop up on hacker news lately:

https://adamtooze.substack.com

I'm still a serious economist reader and podcast listener, especially for their special reports, but I've also started to rely more and more on a curated RSS feed of substacks & blogs.

>Owners:

    Exor N.V. (43.40%)
    Rothschild
    Cadbury
    Schroder
    Layton[1]

I subscribed to Le Monde Diplomatique for a year and rarely found more than 1 or 2 articles a month that were interesting info I couldn't get elsewhere.

I subscribe to Foreign Affairs and find it to be 80% boring junk on the same set of topics about the rise of China, what to do about Russia, etc. The occasional article or book review on a less covered country makes it sort of worth the subscription price to me.

If you're just looking for something like "interesting book reviews," I'd take a look at the Literary Review. Or maybe the Times Literary Supplement. And New York Review of Books and London Review of Books offer much more in-depth reviews, but reading between the lines it seems like the op is saying The Economist is too liberal for them and is not going to like the tenor of most of what's in these.

I also recommend Spiegel International[4], Le Monde Diplomatique[5], and Nikkei Asia[6] for the German, French, and Japanese perspectives respectively.

[1] https://ft.com

[2] https://politico.eu

[3] https://wsj.com

[4] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe

[5] https://mondediplo.com

[6] https://asia.nikkei.com

For example, on the Left you have N+1 and Progressive. On the Center you have Atlantic and Foreign Affairs. Conservatives have National Affair, American Affairs, and National Review.

But none of them is a biweekly paper/magazine intended to keep you informed of all major current events from an international perspective.

Realistically, you have to go with a daily: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post.

We don’t have weekly or biweekly papers in the US.