Some people do read Playboy for the articles. In fact, I did read a Lee Iaccoca interview in Playboy once, it was excellent from what I remember. OP might want to seriously consider looking into that often-pigeonholed publication.
Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
151–160 of 320 posts
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#152I am long-time fun of Economist, but unfortunately the quality decreases. E.g. last issue EU is frozen and claim so many people will die in Europe due to high energy prices. 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 an…
> First, I find they did not explain their model well. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's not an extraordinary claim tho. Literally, every year old people die because of cold weather and not being able to afford the proper heating. This is basically old news. The cost of living "crisis" means that the price of energy is not becoming a matter for the average working person. This isn't really ext…
I agree that more people will die, but the Economist claim is that 100k more will die: " Hence the energy crunch this year could cause over 100,000 extra deaths of elderly people across Europe. "
Article shows some modelling, but I was not convinced and can point some holes: https://www.economist.com/interactive/graphic-detail/2022/11...
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#153For me the main problem with most of these publications is that although oftentimes they couch things in data and science they are mostly opinion-based so their prognostications are quite fallible. They remind me of the "The Standard" and "Business 2.0" etc., of the aughts. While things were going up, they seemed to catch the wave and ride it, but as the bubble burst their faults due to lack of any underlying structure or rigor became evident.
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)
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#154I took out an Economist subscription for the first time this year, and I've found it really mixed. Lots of interesting articles, but I'll agree the analysis isn't as good as many other sources I've seen (in my view). 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 insidi…
Oh, yeah, for about two months any time I opened Facebook (in fairness, once a week) it was pushing that article at me. Really lowered my opinion of the Economist; a very low quality article more befitting of something like the Telegraph.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#155One effect you might be experiencing is over-familiarity. I find magazines fascinating for a while, then you understand their house style, the quirks of the recurrent columns, their political stance, and you know what they are going to say even before you read. Even when they say the opposite of what you were expecting the reach their conclusion by travelling through territory you've been through many times before.
Weirdly, I've recently been experiencing this with Twitter. Every opinion unfolds mechanically. Even the curve balls are predictable at a statistical level.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
The literal exact opposite happens. Journalists without a byline or with a shrunken byline have little incentive to build up a brand as a trustworthy and thorough reporter because they will derive no benefit from their reputation. When their bosses lean on them to produce crap to gin pageviews up just before bonus season they therefore produce crap. Media owners want this. They want journalism to be commodities becau…
This doesn't necessarily mesh with what we see in reality though. The Economist doesn't use a byline and they're known as having very high quality content. Even if it's slipped a bit in recent years, it's slipped less than writing in general has. Writers who create their own brand tend to create echo chambers, because readers seek out those they trust (i.e. those who don't challenge the readers preconceived notions).…
>This doesn't necessarily mesh with what we see in reality though. The Economist doesn't use a byline and they're known as having very high quality content.
A good way to see that it's not is to find out what investors or beltway policy elites would think and hunt for (entirely factual) things which might contradict their narrative.
I cited an example below of an article about github copilot that was hot garbage - like a starry eyed intern had watched an investor pitch.
On the war front one of the things which I have read in milbloggers is that a key goal of Russia's bombardment of the electricity network is to inhibit Ukrainian rail logistics and prevent the front from being resupplied. Is it working? Well, it was only ever "meant" to crack Ukrainian morale so they wouldnt even think to analyze that.
(good military reporting ought to have a bias towards logistics, but it rarely does...)
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#157Covid demonstrated that all mainstream media in the UK are controlled by the government. I ditched both my Economist and FT subscriptions in favour of independent journalists. I would have ditched the Economist anyway, it's become demented. I've been glancing at Foreign Affairs, but not sufficiently yet to decide on subscribing.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#158You might add https://www.spiegel.de/international/ to your list. It is free and well written. 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 edit…
I'd stay far away from the Spiegel. While it has the reputation of a liberal magazine it actually started off as the mouthpiece of the BND. For some weird reason it got that reputation when it attacked Adenauer's policies when he and de Gaulle were working on bringing Germany and France closer together. While it somehow has retained this intellectual status to a lot of people it is an outrageous publication, with much better marketing than it has content. It has also hired more and more leadership from tabloids.
I'd look into Swiss or French publications. Although most of the French media has also unfortunately been pretty streamlined.
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#159Jacobin is directionally correct but I'd love to hear of any better/less problematic publications
Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to The Economist?
#160I know some will call me biased, or worse. But I think that rt.com is doing an honest journalistic job covering politics related to Russia, it is definitely different perspective compared to western news. One thing I tweaked is to add background CSS color to element with Stylus extension as they use it for extensive quotation in articles, much more visible when it is editorial and when it is quotes.
``` em { background: #ccd } ```