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.
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.
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
Weirdly, I've recently been experiencing this with Twitter. Every opinion unfolds mechanically. Even the curve balls are predictable at a statistical level.
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.
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 Qatar”, page 18 in print) with the argument that while Qatar 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.
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.
Added bonus: you can have X and anti-X perspectives for most values of X.
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).
If nothing else, the pain they put me through to end the subscription was enough to prevent me from ever signing up again.
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 Of course, economics is central to the whole story.
As for a non-center-right take on economic issues, I'm enjoying Bethany McLean's work. Most recently her podcast Capitalisn't. https://www.capitalisnt.com (Her cohost Luigi Zingales is mostly a dink, so I 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.
If you're not reading Private Eye already I would highly recommend it.
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...
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)
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.
They provide actual reporting and not just narrative; WSJ reporting broke the news of the Theranos fraud for example.
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
[3] https://wsj.com
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'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 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.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/
I’ve also enjoyed Adam tooze’s newsletter after seeing it crop up on hacker news lately:
E: It is basically a somewhat long list of newspapers and periodicals from across the world.
https://asiatimes.com/ in english, mostly free
https://www.jeuneafrique.com/ in french, subscription
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.
Wait for it... Dang is gonna ban me again. BUT I'M DRUNK! Damn it.
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.
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
I share your sentiment re Economist.
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.
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 think you're better off just getting access to specific long read articles when they're released.
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.
Which values? I find it to be very analytic and dry in a good way.
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 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.nlIt'd probably be FT for me, they follow a "just the facts" approach mostly.
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.
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).
``` em { background: #ccd } ```
It doesn’t have an euro focus though.
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
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.
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.
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...
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.