The magazine´s economic coverage remains at least adequate. It´s not called the Linotypist , after all. It is however clearly outclassed at least by the Financial Times and a handful of select blogs (taken all together, that is), and for day-to-day coverage it obviously has a bit of a handicap.

And from what you could call a purely conceptual POV it does leave a lot to be desired. The fact that the editorial line gets in the way wouldn´t be so bothersome if it didn´t happen in underhanded ways. I´ve already mentioned those Austrians, although perhaps they may have faded into the background somewhat lately (I wouldn´t know, since I´m no longer reading the thing). As it happens, back in 2004/2005 or so the “global imbalances” were a bigger concern than these days, what with all the –not entirely uncontroversial—research fleshing out the global savings glut thang and the so-called Bretton Woods II system that has come down the pike in the intervening months.

I´d wager that the Economist´s take on these developments went like this: “some say that everything is tickety-boo. Others answer that there is always people who argue that ‘this time is different’ before a recession. Only time will tell. In the meantime, don´t forget your glibertarian vitamines, kids.”

This is a bit of a change of topic, anyway. We were exchanging below-the-belt blows on whether “it all goes back to Iraq” or not, remember? If you´re willing to accept that my dislike for the Economist is all-encompassing and pure, endearing in its crankiness, then we can be pals.

I´m an agnostic myself, by the way. I think that Godfrey´s existence is beyond the domain of empirical evidence, and that for each and everyone of his alleged postings there is a parsimonious explanation

I do believe that you are incorrect in stating that The Economist suffers from slipping standards of economic coverage…although I enjoyed the fact that not long after the “Incredible Shrinking Dollar” cover the dollar spent the next 12 months rebounding versus the Euro. As anectodal evidence, check out this Buttonwood column from the Feb 17th issue…10 days before the recent spike in global equity volatility:

***An uneasy calm has settled over financial markets

IT IS a scene familiar to all Western lovers. The cavalry is riding through a mountain pass. One officer turns to a comrade. “I don’t like it,” he says nervously. “It’s too quiet.” The next second, an arrow hits him in the chest.

The financial markets are in a similar state of nervous anticipation. Things have been going extremely well. According to David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch, the American stockmarket has sustained its longest run since 1954 without a day’s decline of 2%. The interest-rate spread offered by high-yield, or junk, bonds over Treasury bonds is thinner than ever. Volatility is low. A market “correction”, aimed straight at the chest, seems overdue.***

The crystal ball was working that day, at least.

If understatement is indicated or intended—as it is in upper-class British English, and perhaps in contemporary standard American English (I don’t know)—then “rather” can mean the opposite of “to some extent”, carrying the sense of “quite a lot” or “very much”. Therefore, “I very much like and respect”.

Eeeuh. How smarmy.

Well, I didn’t know that you were referring to the article. That wasn’t clear. I only skimmed the thing very briefly. And I was perfectly relaxed when I commented the last time. I did it on impulse, but I wasn’t anything but relaxed.

Anyway, even if such Americans exist, and Martin may be right about that, I think that he himself shouldn’t have gone off on such a tirade based on one writer. And James Fallows is a distinguished journalist who, I suspect, doesn’t feel inferior to anyone.

No, Martin, you should take your own advice. Take it easy in your own language. And if some Americans feel that way, it’s too bad for them. We don’t need even more arrogance from Brits only to reinforce that feeling of inferiority.

‘

“Mick Angel is a better man than I.”

Your post gives me a chance to say something I thought of after my post.

I subscribe to two magazines: Private Eye and The Economist and something strikes me as very different between the two ‘organs’ (apart from the obvious):

When Private Eye gets something wrong (which it often does) it does so with what you guess are the best intentions and sensible thinking, you could say it gets things wrong in the right way.

When The Economist gets things wrong, its original positions seem so empty, foolhardy or groundless in hindsight that it is sometimes embarassing: it seems to get things wrong in the wrong way.

If I had to choose one over the other I’d take Private Eye over The Economist any day.

Time for bed.

Mick Angel is a better man than I.

To be honest, I asked knowing full well that you can´t comment on your employer´s policy. It´s trashy, but what´s one going to do?

The point of my post was to defend our readers… We know from our research that they are extremely…

They´re wunnerful, truly. I know that for a fact because I used to be one of them.

You´re latching onto the frankly inane notion that I and others deem your readers to be gullible idiots, who buy into the magazine´s blandishments without having the slightest idea of what proper journalism should look like.

Sorry, that´s not going to fly.

Make no mistake, you do strive to flatter your core readership. This and other assorted mannerisms of the magazine are an important factor of its success. But the Economist is not a rag. OF COURSE NOT. You just don´t happen to be at all that good, IMO.

Don´t you agree that you´re making a run-of-the-mill appeal to authority? A glorified “50 million Elvis fans can´t be wrong” ploy?

Are you trying to say that “prestige” (or “notoriety”) and “informational value” are equivalent in journalism?

That the concept of “informational value” is simple? That when people read about news item X in notorious news source Y they are only interested in grasping the objective reality of X, without attaching value to the observation of Y´s biases or lack thereof vis-à-vis X?

What is confusing me is your notion that The Economist is little more than a confidence-trick, and quite a lot of pretty bright people are falling for it.

No, it´s not “my notion”. It´s never been. You keep trying to trot out that straw man. See above. Or Dsquared´s last post.

And you´re not confused. I´d wager that you´re a remarkably sharp lad.

We´re running in circles here.

The economist’s style can certainly be grating and patronising. The arrogant/matronly tone shouldn’t get in the way of good journalism or insightful articles and it usually doesn’t. It’s a ‘house style’ in a way and comes with the territory.

I have come close to unsubscribing a few times; mostly when the ‘party line’ proved to be incredibly incorrect and yet the editor plainly chose not explain why it got things so spectacularly wrong. Bush/Iraq is the most obvious example where the editorial tack chosen seemed to be at the expense of quality (namely more level-headed analysis). I’m sure the editors of Boy-Band fanzines aimed at 15-year old girls know better than to take the words of politicians at face value (even when they are saying what you want to hear) yet the Economist fell for the spin and flawed Iraq intelligence hook-line-and-sinker.

I think Iraq was a good test of the Economist’s strength in rational analysis and sadly it got it so badly wrong that a lot of trust has been lost. At the moment I trust it on very little; its journalism is shallow and often too anecdotal, its analysis is slightly better but the Blair/Bush/Iraq cloud hanging over the editor’s head means that any article that goes near these subjects has me reaching for the pinch of salt. More often than not I simply skim over the subjects they have verifiably gotten horribly and misguidedly wrong, rather than read those articles as deeply as other subjects.

Ignoring the poor political judgments it has made it has now sadly started making some glaring mistakes in the fields of technology and ecology.

The mistakes and ‘skim-only’ topics does mean there’s less and less to read of any value in each edition but I live in hope that the trend will reverse. It can’t get everything wrong surely.

The reason I haven’t unsubscribed is that even when the Economist gets it wrong the writing style still forces you to reason against it rather than merely throw the magazine into the bin. The glib throw-away lines hoping to steer your opinion or hide a shallow article are sometimes non-obvious and I find that spotting them is good mental exercise.

As someone else has mentioned in the comments above the Economist is neither “stupid” or “dishonest” (yet?) and it has a better chance of being ‘a good read’ than almost anything else.

I wish the writers at the Economist well and hope they can pull the level of analysis and insight up a few notches. After some years of reading their articles ‘I rather respect and like them’.

Sigh…it all goes back to Iraq, doesn’t it? The first two points of Moveon.Godfreys substantive Q&A revolve around Iraq and the how-dare-they-support-the-warmongering-lying-devil-himself liberalish view.

I hope that your sigh is like the one described in Chapter III of “Alice through the looking glass”:

“The little voice sighed deeply: it was VERY unhappy, evidently, and Alice would have said something pitying to comfort it, `If it would only sigh like other people!’ she thought. But this was such a wonderfully small sigh, that she wouldn’t have heard it at all, if it hadn’t come QUITE close to her ear. The consequence of this was that it tickled her ear very much, and quite took off her thoughts from the unhappiness of the poor little creature.”

I couldn´t live with any other kind of sigh.

I do apologize for my frivolous interest, shared with many of the “liberalish” set, in picking through the rubble of the Iraq war. It must be bothersome, this background noise of discontent. Some people should let bygones be bygones. But it´s an important-ish topic, anyway. Or it was and is sold as such. Do you remember all that “central front in the Global War on Terror” thing?

There is no merit whatsoever in the January the 11th Leader you cite, anyway. So they are bailing out, after four years. Do allow me to shrug. With a Kirby Krackle.

The “substantive” Q&A, irrespective of whether it deserves the adjective or not, is certainly not exhaustive. I let my subscription lapse early in 2004, and the occasional issues that have dropped in my lap after that point have only received cursory glances.

It´s not all about Iraq, mate. Do I have to provide a few examples of their lacklustre and often unrealistic, petulant and downright ignorant European coverage? Of the recent profusion of distracting comparisons between Europe and the US that pollute many of their articles, and the obvious purpose of which is to cater to the conceits of the stateside target audience?

Incidentally, and since everybody is tossing “full disclosures” around, here´s one of my own: I´m Romanian, and I´ve lived in Spain, France, the Netherlands and Germany. I´ve found the fact that the discussion of the magazine´s “mid-Atlantic” line (to use Henry´s polite term) has sparked a short Anglo-American squabble a tad perplexing, to be honest.

Do we really have to bother to comment on the slipping standards of economic coverage? On the increasing proportion of articles that follow the pattern: “this guy says this; this other guy says that; only time will tell; whatever the case, remember that you can´t go wrong with the editorial line”? On the fact that they´ll innocently slip here and yon the odd reference to, say, the Austrian School, without the proper qualifications (i.e. a mention of the fact that they are not exactly mainstream, or that their prescriptions to overcome recessions tend to command less respect than their descriptions thereof)?

Moveon.Godfrey is hilarious, by the way.

As for the magazine’s continued willingness to push the party line, I direct you to the January 11th leader on Bush’s “surge” plan:

After everything that has gone so wrong, it would be foolish to argue that Mr Bush’s plan is certain of success. Even if it does succeed, this would not be “victory” in any normal sense. Iraq is likely to be violent and unstable for years to come. Contrary to what Mr Bush said this week, the dream of turning it into a democratic model for other Arabs has died.

It is a characteristic of democracies to aim high and lose patience quickly when success is elusive. The people of the United States thought they were ridding the world of a dictator who was building an atomic bomb. They hoped to be greeted as liberators, not invaders. More than the cost in soldiers’ lives and squandered dollars, it is the feeling that they are doing no good that has turned them against this war. Instead of a high-minded victory, they have witnessed a debacle.

Or put it 11-plus style; which name from group B goes with which phrase in group A?

Group A

1. I respect and like _____
2. I rather respect and like ______

Group B:

X: The Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman
Y: Billy Smith, a bright twelve-year-old with a blog about politics.

It’s (1,X) and (2, Y), isn’t it?

I remain ignorant of this “American” sense of “I rather like and respect” which means something other than “I like and respect, to some extent”. It certainly isn’t in the Economist stylebook, for example.

I don’t know why anyone is making this utterly unsupported and quite likely false sweeping empirical claim about the magazine publishing industry, by the way, that magazines which patronise their readers don’t succeed. Der Spiegel patronises its German readers, the New Yorker talks down to its readers, even Vanity Fair does. It’s almost as if Lane had decided on what point he was going to make and then invented an airy generalisation to support it, although since he is a staff writer at the Economist that would surely be out of character.