Dani Rodrik makes a self-conscious confession today:
Am I the only economist who does not read The Economist? Well maybe the first one to confess to it.
…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 too stopped my subscription more than a year ago. This is a far cry from my pre-graduate school days when I (warning to self: you will rue this nerdy confession) actually treasured a picture of myself taken outside the Economist’s headquarters. (No, I will not post the photo.)
It wasn’t the magazine’s endorsement of politicians and wars that I had come to abhor–a factor that has driven away more than one reader. Dani puts his finger on the true cause: the more I knew about a subject (development, Africa, civil wars, etc.) the more I shuddered to read the thing. I often have the same complaint with coverage in other news sources, but Dani hits on something especially vexing: the high-falootin tone.
Another factor in my decision: seeing the magazine’s editor speak in San Francisco about two or three years back. I was literally overcome with horror over the simple-mindedness of his argument. Could it be? The man at the helm of my favorite news source was a boob.
The big question: what to read instead? I remember Dani telling me that the Financial Times was his paper of choice, and certainly their coverage of the recent election crisis in Kenya was a notch above the rest. (The New York Times coverage was–and continues to be–stomach churningly bad). I balk at FT‘s sticker price, however, especially because I’m bored silly by the business and financial news that dominates their reporting.
My solution, a mix of the New York Times, the Guardian, the (increasingly suspect) BBC News, AllAfrica.com for a sample of African papers, Foreign Affairs, my beloved New Yorker, and of course the blogosphere. Increasingly the latter.
What, dear readers, have you to add to the list of recommended periodicals?
16 Responses
Finding the “best” news in the shortest time is exceedingly difficult. I think it is important to be clear what you are doing with the information. I feel comfortable traveling on the Economist, investing on WSJ/FT/Regional Papers, voting on WaPo/WSJ/Candidate Pages, etc.
Besides editorial tone, the biggest problem with the Economist is the absence of a byline. By anonymizing the writing, they make it impossible to develop reliance on the work of individual writers.
For the amount of time I spend on international news, I am satisfied with the Economist supplemented by occasional articles from a long tail (about twenty publications regularly cross my path).
I do recommend using Foreign Affairs as secondary, or entertainment reading. The has fewer (but non-zero) primary sources, but much better analysis.
I can’t stand the New Yorker. I’ll take the Economist over it any day. Although, I have to say I lucked out that they had a supply error and haven’t been sending my copy for about a month now. I don’t want to read one more thing about the Democratic Primary. Ever.
I’ve been reading Prospect magazine for a while now, and it’s been pretty interesting.
They do have a website with most of the stories available for free, http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/landing_page.php
Personally I find it more informative (and easier) to listen rather than read because the quality of the BBC’s radio broadcasts are so much higher than most of the print sources I can find. It’s not the same thing, but listening to Focus on Africa and listening to the World Service serves me better than reading the NYT.
Of course, the problem is that this doesn’t help one with the question of what to consume that is directly development oriented.
I stopped reading BBC for the following reason:
I have been always reading BBC in English, and also the version in Persian. The latter cover more detailed news about Iran. Sometimes for curiosity I read the same news in both languages, I can confess that they have been one translation of other, so word by word similar, or completely different: for example Ahmadinejad domestic speeches appeared very differently in both languages, often providing very different, sometimes opposite, views. They are artistic of finding the favorite phrases, or part of phrases, with different meaning, in the same speech.
@mauricio: That’s a good point. There are several great African magazines. African Business is superb, and I usually enjoy BBC Focus on Africa as well.
Dear Chris,
If you think that The Economist is bad, imagine what is to survive with the Brazilian press – our media moguls make guys like Rupert Murdoch look as angels and model citizens.
In Latin America, the most interesting magazine I know is Gatopardo. It is published in Colombia, but prints amazing articles from every nation in the region.
I don´t know if there is anything like that on Africa, but it would be great to read a magazine more or less in the same fashion.
all the best
You may be correct here Chris, but I still think the breadth of coverage is pretty good. There are lots of stories in there that I would not find anywhere else, they just have to be read with a discerning eye.
I have to admit…. I love The Economist! I suppose that like for all other media sources, you should critically engage with The Ec., rather than accept it at face value.
Lucky for me, I read French, so aside from NYT, FT, and the BBC, I also read Le Monde and Courrier International. Oh and the International Herald Tribune isn’t bad either….Also Allafrica.com is good – in the same vein, IRIN news has some interesting coverage.
But I agree with Chris – I tend to rely more and more on the “blogosphere” for news. Except I find that I’m drawn to blogs that mostly don’t challenge my views…
I agree. The FT is good, but during my time in DC, I came to be very fond of the Washington Post. I greatly prefer the international coverage in the WaPo to the NYT and the “Style” section is ordinarily an absolute riot. The WaPo has much more sensible columnists than the NYT as well, thinks I.
This may be a good place to ask for some advice. For the past couple of years, I have been trying to learn about development problems through news, blogs and popular books ( I am a retired mathematician who worked in pure topics like topology). I found Economist, New York Times have many excellent articles but on the whole I began to distrust them. Almost any topic one tries to understand seemes to be like research topic. I slowly started drifting to blogs which filter, give some news and references to research articles. Eventhough the research article are not completely understandable, they seem to give some feel but also indicate the inadequacies in techniques ( not completely reliable data, simplified methodolgy, doubtful statistical procedures even for somebody like me who does not know statistics). Then I shift to other blogs etc. I seem to be able to trust empirical work despite such inadequacies, like the work indicated by Paul Collier in “The Bottom Billion”.
Are there any suggestions to understand ‘development economics’ better. Mike Reed suggests in his papers that what many ecoomists use for practical purposes is some undergraduate economics, the rest is for status.
I’m with you Chris – I also find the Economist’s tone to be extremely off-putting. I used to read them and then stopped for exactly the same reasons you mentioned.
As for regular news sources, the NY Times and the Guardian serve me well, plus the usual Ugandan sources – as for other world news, good blogs are priceless. For instance, for the Middle East, you can’t go wrong with Juan Cole’s Informed Comment.
I’m not sure it was conscious decision-making, but I stopped reading The Economist around the time that I learned Megan McArdle was a contributor. Suddenly it all seemed arrogant and the flaws were less easy to forgive.
My daily reading is a mix of FT, WSJ, Global Insight (via Factiva), Portfolio.com and several blogs (including Salmon Felix’s blog on Portfolio)
Same impression. The economist’s coverage of Russia is ridiculously biased.
But: I liked their persistent prognosis of the subprime crisis even a couple of years ago.
Ouch! Great post! One of the most serious drawbacks I find with traditional media (Economist included) is its appetite for hyping crisis and celebrity. This sells, but is a huge problem for people who would like to venture beyond the blah blah and find out what the hell is actually happening around the planet, and learn something useful from what is happening. Tracking trends requires a different sort of dialogue than traditional media offers and bloggers can meet this need. Bloggers can also speed up the process of innovation —- heaven help us —- beyond the tech sector. Yes, I do believe that the public sector can and should innovate. I try to track this in my (very small) blog Quickthink. http://laf.ee/wp/
But can we develop a network that spreads around on its own accord? I hope so.
http://laf.ee/wp/ But
The Christian Science Monitor–limited, but always good writing and interesting topics. And definitely the Atlantic Monthly.