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For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

economist.com

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Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#31

Post by kanwisher »

plg wrote: post #28

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 ab…

Economist is the only publication i pay for. I'm not sure how many newspapers/magazines could really follow suit. There is only so many high quality sources anyone can read, its a small niche I think. Also the average economist reader is probably quite high on income so I suspect thats a skews their ability to charge

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#32

Post by [deleted] »

plg wrote: post #28

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 ab…

[deleted]

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#33

Post by kuni-toko-tachi »

fweespeech wrote: post #9
potatoman2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with News Corp?

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.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/21/attacks-on-abc-... And I don't think anyone reasonable believes Fox is anything but a Conservatives-centric news network tha…

The Economist is the propaganda mouthpiece of the elite and it's cover is a revealing indication of future plans. It's stories are easily debunked as fiction even with cursory internet searches.

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#34

Post by Altay- »

bkjelden wrote: post #20

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.

Important people use Twitter. Teens and grandmothers use Facebook.

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#35

Post by 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.

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#36

Post by [deleted] »

LukeHoersten wrote: post #15

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 w…

[deleted]

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#38

Post by Retric »

kanwisher wrote: post #31
plg wrote: post #28

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 ab…

Economist is the only publication i pay for. I'm not sure how many newspapers/magazines could really follow suit. There is only so many high quality sources anyone can read, its a small niche I think. Also the average economist reader is probably quite high on income so I suspect thats a skews their ability to charge

At 1$/week you can pay for 1 author per ~2,000 subscribers. That can work at a really small scale as long as the rest of your costs are kept low.

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#39

Post by NelsonMinar »

plg wrote: post #28

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 ab…

I fear The Economist may be one of the only examples of how for-pay content can work. (Not curated, their content is original.) I'd love to know more about how well it's working for The Economist, too, is there anything public about their financials?

Re: For only the second time in our history the ownership of The Economist changes

#40

Post by Ollinson »

osipovas wrote: post #10

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…

I subscribed to the economist sometime in the middle of 2012 and did not have a positive experience.

I'm convinced that much of the allure of the economist comes from that it is frank contrarian news source.

I don't like the anonymous authorship for reasons which have been stated on hacker news in other economist posts.

The economist is sneaky. All of the articles are fact/numbers based and then shoehorned with a political interpretation that you can't realistically argue with unless you are an expert in the some very niche domain. This leads to many people in my field (finance) having strong opinions on an impossible variety of subjects which ultimately boils down to parroting the economist. The culture of "lying with statistics" comes to mind.

I realize many of these problems are inherent in journalism but the economist relies more than others on being opaquely unimpeachable. Reading the economist felt less like a dialog and more like "believe us or appear uninformed in public."

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