The economist writers are like chatGPT of journalism. It all sounds fine and you think it's great right up to the point it's on a topic you know /anything/ at all about. Suddenly every single time, just on the topics you know just something of it has no depth, no understanding and has no idea what facts it just made up.
The writers are clearly intelligent and literary it's just they genuinely don't care to understand the subject of their writing. Try it for yourself. Pick anything you know a bit about then read the economist on it. It's a partial crib sheet at best.
I pick investing above and think that list is shallow. Any takers for Florida, poker, Scottish independence, banned books?
> It all sounds fine and you think it's great right up to the point it's on a topic you know /anything/ at all about. Suddenly every single time, just on the topics you know just something of it has no depth
These are related facts -- journalism for general audiences will always come off shallow to experts. Experts are better off seeking niche publications catering to their expertise, and just supplementing that with some general audience material.
Even the experts recognize they layperson vs expert audience distinction -- if you look at Andrew Gelman's five book recommendations, none of them are going to transform you into an expert. At best they are the 5 books that got him excited about the _idea_ statistics.
You're conflating two things and that is probably my fault.
The list of books here is shallow. Asking a few investment professionals would have got them to a better list, IMHO. If they don't care about investment, why write it?
Separate to that. The economist is flipping terrible. Beyond, shallow, actually very, very wrong in obvious ways on anything you know about - that kind of lack of depth of understanding. Someone here asked me why I think the economist worse than other news and I guess its because I take it more personally how messed up they are because in the broadest possible sense they accord to similar politics and ideology to myself. A lefty friend of mine, who is intelligent and sensible put me onto it with respect their incessant drum beating for every possible war. Iran, North Korea, Russia, China, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq - all of them and more. It was suggested to me to look at one current event in a small amount of depth, the kind you'd expect a journalist to be able to match. Eg, join twitter [1], follow some people who seem to know things, read their links critically, anything good you find, follow the author, cull that list of anyone you later decide is not up to much. Then go read the economist on it with a view to just finding the number of salient and important facts that you would use yourself to form a view and think it ridiculous to leave out that the economist somehow manages not to note at all. It didn't make me a lefty but I sure changed my ideas on the economist dramatically.
Try it yourself one day. There's shallow because depth is impossible in x hundreds words and there's deeply misleading in beautiful language.
Pick A.I. or Microchips fabs, or Julian Assange, or Electric Vehicles or end to end encryption or anything you want to know a little more about. Do the work for a few evenings first then go to the economist's take.
YMMV of course it may. Mine sure suddenly did.
[1] Never post, delete the a/c when you're done - keep it focused on finding things out.
It's true that the writers of the economist are frequently glib. This is compounded by their very strict style guide and editors. Everything sounds paradoxically very distinctive and generic, and it reads like it's all written by the same person. So I can relate to your GPT comment too.
But they very rarely get the big picture wrong. Geopolitics, global economic trends, American politics from a distance, etc. I don't think 5 books on this or pop science that are why most people read it.
So I agree with you, but I also like the paper a lot.
Do you think the Economist is unusual here? Journalists are overwhelmingly dilettantes even about subjects they have covered as a beat, with limited knowledge. That’s what journalism is.
Sure there's always Gell-Mann amnesia [1] And we put less stock in USA Today or Yahoo! news stories than the NYT. Or at least used to.
The thing that is particularly bad with respect to the economist is that there are many intelligent, thoughtful, educated people who haven't spotted just how terrible it is. The economist is also particularly bad given they push an agenda then fit the reporting they plagiarise to match that agenda with no references and no byline.
"Chat GPT write me an article with respect domestic politics of country X that supports the next possible war between the west and country Y." Chat GPT doesn't write as well as the economist oxbridge grads however the actual content is no worse.
- The Scottish Independence Movement - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/05/02/wha...
- Poker - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha...
- Florida - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/16/wha...
- Investing - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/04/26/fiv...
- Books you’re forbidden from reading - https://www.economist.com/the-economist-reads/2023/02/24/sev...