Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

news.ycombinator.com

81–90 of 320 posts

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

#83
The Financial Times is simply excellent. In my opinion it's substantially better than what even The Economist used to be like ~10 years ago. Almost every article has high quality, there's no clickbait content and the coverage of topics is very appropriate for someone who wants to keep informed on geopolitics and international finance. Though it's not as broad as what The Economist covers, you won't find as much coverage of developing nations.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

#84

What narrative manipulation have you seen from The Economist? I haven’t noticed it so perhaps I am being manipulated! I’d love to hear your insight!

The way they discuss the UK/EU dynamic rankles me. They spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about Europe, while talking about the UK as if it's on the cusp of a new age. 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…

I should have added “in the last year” to make it explicit that I was directly responding to OP when they said they had noticed a shift “in the last year”. I haven’t noticed this shift! The shift I did notice was when Zanny took over as editor-in-chief a few years back.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

#86

I think others have given good recommendations, but will add the Atlantic and New Yorker. 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.

I kinda have the exact same experience with The Atlantic as OP does with The Economist. I used to read it regularly but now it feels there's 5% good articles and 95% some kind of highbrow clickbait. 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 b…

This is a selection of about 60 story links on the front page. The story about cats is about people paying thousands for organ transplants for pets, which is somewhat intriguing and new to me.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

#87
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their “customer retention” process is extremely aggressive, even by most traditional print publications’ standards.

I canceled recently and had to escalate to “I have told you to cancel three times and if you cannot cancel now I will have to dispute the charges with my credit card company.”

Been there. It's not just the economist, most services that include the node "Send an email to unsubscribe" are a problem for me.

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

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

#88
In the last few years I've moved away from following large publications and toward following individuals. This keeps the average quality of the content very high and allows me view information that --while accurate-- might not make it past an editorial board.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?

#89

I feel like I asked HN the same question about the Economist a couple years ago. I still really appreciate its broad approach to world news and its slanted-but-two-sided view of politics. Honestly the replacement you're looking for to understand international reality is probably some mix of very costly Stratfor briefings and France24 and DW. (Jacobin? seriously? is al Jazeera too well sourced for you?) Internal US po…

I put the Jacobin there to make it clear I'm open to good writing from anywhere on the political spectrum. I've read some good stuff from them, and drivel in equal measure, but I find the same with the Economist. I'm looking to try something new and I'm not against a socialist perspective.

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

Post reply on HN