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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

#91

Post by eevilspock »

icebraining wrote: post #70
eevilspock wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality and accountability is what happens when we pay. We've traded quality and accountability for "free" garbage floating in a sea of ads. The NYTimes is still too dependent on advertising. That they consider "native advertising" acceptable shows compromised journalistic principles. "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." – Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Fa…

I'd say you overestimate the number of people working on ad-supported software. Many, if not most of us are working on for-pay software and services. The reason I'm ambivalent about ads is not because it funds my paycheck (it doesn't, we charge for our services), but because for all their evils, ads work as a kind of enforced redistribution mechanism, and since geographic adjustments of prices work poorly on the web,…

Imagine a world, pre-internet, where almost all books are handed out free, but with their pages loaded with ads, and their stories embedded with "native" ads and product placements. Imagine that book "stores" get a cut of the ad revenue and so are incented to stock and push whatever book titles "clicked" the most and contained the most ads?

Authors in this world would say they have no choice, because readers will always choose the free book over the $10 or even $5 book. The bookstores only stock the free books for the same reason.

In that world you would make exactly the same argument that you just made to me.

I'm glad you work on non ad-supported software. But look at it from a consumption, share of revenue and availability perspective: ad supported software is eating the web.

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

#92

Post by dbarlett »

bradleyjg wrote: post #87
jazzyk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not put the NYT in the same league as The Economist. The NYT used to be a quality publication, but recently has been going down hill, fast (recent fiasco with quickly edited extremely one-sided article on Ellen Pao's verdict, etc) I have been a subscriber to The Economist for 25 years now, and while I don't always agree with their opinions, their articles are unquestionably well researched - and beautifully w…

The job the Times has is at least an order of magnitude harder than the Economist . I enjoy reading the Economist , but I don't know if I'd say well researched. A few times I've come across articles in my own field that seem really off, which makes me uneasy about the articles on banana plantations in Uruguay. AFAIK the gold standard in copy editing and fact checking is the New Yorker .

Congratulations, you don't suffer from the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect [1].

[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthemachine/2014/03/the-ge...

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

#93

Post by igravious »

bradleyjg wrote: post #87
jazzyk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not put the NYT in the same league as The Economist. The NYT used to be a quality publication, but recently has been going down hill, fast (recent fiasco with quickly edited extremely one-sided article on Ellen Pao's verdict, etc) I have been a subscriber to The Economist for 25 years now, and while I don't always agree with their opinions, their articles are unquestionably well researched - and beautifully w…

The job the Times has is at least an order of magnitude harder than the Economist . I enjoy reading the Economist , but I don't know if I'd say well researched. A few times I've come across articles in my own field that seem really off, which makes me uneasy about the articles on banana plantations in Uruguay. AFAIK the gold standard in copy editing and fact checking is the New Yorker .

The New Yorker has a sterling reputation what it comes to copy editing, not sure if they have the same reputation regarding fact checking. The New Yorker isn't a destination for me though whereas the Economist most certainly is one of the few sites I will directly type into the URL bar in a browser, I buy their end-of-year year in review religiously, I am neither politically nor economically aligned with them but they cover the shit that matters most in a timely fashion with their ideology in plain sight.

The New York Times has great writers but it is incredibly biased even though it pretends to be impartial -- really it is only a notch up from Pravda and whatever that mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party is called. There have been numerous scandals over the past decades involving journalistic integrity. It is telling that Snowden's revelation broke in the Grauniad (as Private Eye nicknamed it) and the WashPo (dunno). Journalism is in an _amusing_ place right now what with Al Jazeera (in English!), Russia Today, The Intercept, and others. Don't know where I'd class the BBC News.

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

#95

Post by Kutta »

atmosx wrote: post #76
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 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 eco…

Well, the Economist is a newspaper with an officially non-neutral stance. I can hardly view it "the worst form of manipulation" when it's not different from every blog and personal column ever in this sense.

As to the Iraq war, it might have been the case that they supported the invasion right at the beginning (someone could point me to links), but since the casus belli turned out to be bogus I can't remember reading anything but denunciation of the war from the Economist.

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

#96

Post by CamperBob2 »

jcmoscon wrote: post #47
antr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come on. It's the left-wing weekly magazine. I can't read it. It's Keynesianism propaganda.

You're confusing it with some other publication, I'm guessing.

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

#97

Post by gcv »

atmosx wrote: post #76
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 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 eco…

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.

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

#98

Post by gcv »

jazzyk wrote: post #50
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 would not put the NYT in the same league as The Economist. The NYT used to be a quality publication, but recently has been going down hill, fast (recent fiasco with quickly edited extremely one-sided article on Ellen Pao's verdict, etc) I have been a subscriber to The Economist for 25 years now, and while I don't always agree with their opinions, their articles are unquestionably well researched - and beautifully w…

Recently? The Times has been acquiring credibility question marks since before it unquestioningly published the nonsense about aluminum tubes in Iraq.

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

#99

Post by selectodude »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #96
jcmoscon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. It's the left-wing weekly magazine. I can't read it. It's Keynesianism propaganda.

You're confusing it with some other publication, I'm guessing.

You know the Economist is a pretty good publication when people can't decide if it's a far-left or far right mouthpiece.
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