
For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes - ucaetano
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21660919-only-second-time-our-history-ownership-economist-changes-new-chapter
======
plg
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.

~~~
atmosx
I was a subscriber for 4 years and I can confirm that the Economist is crap.
It looks good compared to other choices like 'Times' or 'Newsweek' which are
totally unreadable.

* It has totally absurd double-standards: Russia, Iran, China and their puppets (e.g. Syria and so forth) are 'bad' and 'evil'. US, EU and the UK stand for 'justice and peace in the world'. If your world-view is so naive, then you _deserve_ the economist.

* You never know the author. You never know the actual author's background so reading between the lines is (in the beginning at least) hard

* It has it's own view of economics, which most of the times is miles apart from the academia: If I had to choose between 'Buttonwood'[1] and Paul Krugman, I'd go with Krugman any day of the week. Having different opinion is one thing, diverting from mainstream academia views CONSTANTLY on 101 macro-economics is another.

* The Economist is extremely PRO-WAR. There is NOT ONE instance that I recall the economist NOT backing a war: Afghanistan, Iraq... Latest one was Syria. The magazine's editor, openly called for the USA to attack Syria. The article (main article btw) was awful and brutal.

Are there any good articles in there? Of course. There are many good articles
featuring in the Economist. But overall it's not nearly as good and fair as
most people think it is.

I don't know if the editor changed after 2004, but me and many other readers
have the feeling that after 2004-5 the quality dropped incrementally.

Generally speaking I found "The New Yorker" to be the best[2] magazine so far.
I think part of the reason is that it's not on the spotlight so much, as the
'Economist' and the authors receive less pressure to push a specific agenda.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttonwood](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttonwood)

[2] When I say 'best' in this context I mean avoiding 'double standards'
giving everyone a voice and so on. For example check out the articles on
Wikileaks, Assange, Snowden or any _controversial_ figure in the Economist vs
New Yorker. The New Yorker features interviews, articles and views from both
parties, not only from the US gov. The Economist on the other hand even when
it _tries_ to be fair to someone, uses diminutive terms like "unorthodox",
"unconventional", "self-proclaimed", etc. That's not journalism, that's
manipulation. The worst form of manipulation.

~~~
gcv
Your comment simply says that your politics don't align with The Economist's.

I personally find the "he said, she said" style of reporting that purports to
give a fair account of all sides intolerable and hypocritical. It often allows
complete idiots to air their opinions in the name of presenting a "different"
view. This lets the reporter subtly influence the reader while preserving the
illusion of impartiality.

The Economist is a highly biased newspaper. Unlike nearly all other
publications aspiring to high-brow status, it displays its biases openly.

~~~
Marazan
My main complaint with the Economist (as a subscriber) is that it doesn't
display it's biases openly - it often presents controversial economic or
social positions as settled fact in a neutral style. If you didn't know the
subject it was writing on you would think they were presenting the orthodox
position.

~~~
gcv
If you didn't catch The Economist's biases on a cursory reading of one issue,
that's on you. Simply skimming one of the leader opinion pieces and comparing
it to, e.g., a Krugman column, should tell you that the authors would come to
blows.

Besides, what is an "orthodox" position? Whose?

~~~
Marazan
I'm not talking about their overall world view I'm talking about their "Coffee
growing in Guatamala" or "Cement production in the far east" articles - the
ones where they are providing information on a relatively obscure subject. The
articles present very matter of fact tones when in reality they are often
reporting on one side of genuinely contraversial issues.

~~~
techbio
I prefer my reading to ignore the "teach the controversy" camp.

~~~
Marazan
I'm not talking about lame "1 dissenter out of a million style" fake
controversy, I'm talking about when experts are split 50/50 on an issue.

------
rm999
> 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
What's wrong with News Corp?

~~~
fweespeech
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-c...](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.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/attacks-on-
abc-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/attacks-on-abc-expose-
new-corps-hidden-agenda)

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.

~~~
dredmorbius
_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
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.

~~~
dredmorbius
Well, yes, but that wasn't my argument.

It also doesn't address any _unstated_ biases The Economist Group might have.

~~~
fweespeech
I don't believe they have _unstated_ biases on an institutional scale.
Individual author may have biases but all of them do.

------
osipovas
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
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.

~~~
cubancigar11
I did the same - subscribed in 2007 and cancelled it in 2012. And I am here in
minority but I cancelled it BECAUSE of its content. The barrage of anti China
news, anti India news, and then the lack of any standing on any issue except
free market. Economist consistently backtracks on everything if it somehow
results in more free market. It is why it was established in the first place
so why complain? The height was when they published an article saying how Iran
is against hezbollah but two issues later they said Iran must stop supporting
hezbollah. Then they once went on for several weeks about chinese government's
crackdown on prostitution and how it is fomenting dissent. Then a train
crashed and again they went harping about how dissent was just around the
corner. Moving out of West in 2010 suddenly showed me how Economist is just a
high end mouth piece of British government, hidden behind sophistication and
the prestigious name. So I decided to just cancel my subscription.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Feels pretty familiar. Where did you end up living by the way in 2010?

~~~
cubancigar11
I am in India.

------
LukeHoersten
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.

~~~
davidw
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
They let that speak for itself, too:

[http://www.economist.com/node/12076765](http://www.economist.com/node/12076765)

------
eastbayjake
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
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...](http://www.economist.com/printedition/covers/2015-07-16/ap-
e-eu-la-me-na-uk)

------
tzs
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)

~~~
jaskerr
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.

~~~
tzs
I'm not blaming The Economist. I'm blaming some third party member of their
affiliate program. (Do affiliate programs ever _not_ end up with some
affiliate spamming?)

The links in the emails go to the odd TLDs, where they then redirect a few
times ending up at The Economist with what appears to be affiliate tracking
information in the URL, which I presume is so that the spamming affiliate will
get paid if I subscribe at that point.

If I can figure out what email address @economist.com to report this to I'll
send them a sample of one of the mails and the affiliate tagging information
and hopefully they'll kick that affiliate out of their program.

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

------
acd
"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
[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/gianni-agnelli-
alan-f...](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/07/gianni-agnelli-alan-
friedman)

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

------
pa5tabear
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)

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

------
Marazan
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.

------
bkjelden
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-
Important people use Twitter. Teens and grandmothers use Facebook.

~~~
garethsprice
Teens don't use Facebook.

[http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30603/20150203/faceook-
los...](http://www.techtimes.com/articles/30603/20150203/faceook-losing-teen-
audience-now-its-just-old-people-socializing.htm)

~~~
waterlesscloud
That article seems to indicate that 88% of teenage social media users use
Facebook.

------
orf
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.

------
m52go
For those complaining about The Economist for content and bias, I've found
Current History to be an excellent substitute.

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

~~~
selimthegrim
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.

------
felixgallo
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
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.

~~~
glup
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.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Could be, but they have given a lot of focus on income inequality and have
floated the idea of a basic income as well.

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

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

~~~
dredmorbius
Incorrect:
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/The_Econ...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/The_Economist_May_16_1846.png)

