[HN Gopher] Writing tools I learned from The Economist
___________________________________________________________________
Writing tools I learned from The Economist
Author : ahsoli
Score : 588 points
Date : 2021-04-05 15:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (builtbywords.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (builtbywords.substack.com)
| achempion wrote:
| They definitely have decent journalism but I just can't stand the
| website and cancelled my subscription (although very liked
| content and hope they fix website to make it usable).
|
| The issue I have is that they display ads on a page. I don't mind
| ads in general but they actually embed animated banners which are
| very distracting and it worsens reading experience a lot, and you
| have to pay for such a privilege to stare at flashy animated ads
| of some clothing.
| Drew_ wrote:
| I'm also incredibly confused as to how so many publications are
| clinging onto advertising revenue even for members paying
| hundreds of dollars annually.
|
| A customer rep for The Economist confirmed they also do not
| remove ads and actually suggested I just install an ad blocker!
|
| As far as I can tell, even the WSJ (which costs over $450 a
| year!!!) does not remove ads for subscribers.
|
| The only publications I'm aware of that remove ads are The New
| York Times and The Guardian.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| I'm not fan of their online ads.
|
| But I wish I could have their print ads in the Android
| version.
|
| Like, where else can I get ads for watches that cost the same
| as my flat, airline seats that I would never afford,
| expensive MBA, or job vacancies for multilateral
| organizations.
|
| My targeted online ads are more boring.
| astrange wrote:
| You could steal airline magazines. It's a bit less
| globalist and more elderly (there's a lot of ads for golf
| course retirement communities) but still pretty upwardly
| mobile.
| mjd95 wrote:
| I also find it extremely annoying in the Economist. The New
| Yorker has the same problem.
|
| I used AdblockPlus which works well. I resent having to use an
| ad blocker to read the journalism I'm a paid subscriber for,
| but at least it works.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| The phone app is very good. I almost never use the Economist
| web site.
| randomsearch wrote:
| The iPhone app is lovely
| 1cvmask wrote:
| The Economist has always been upfront about their bias in
| coverage and that has helped them all along. They were
| established to challenge the Corn Laws in the United Kingdom.
|
| https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2007/01/29/the-econo...
|
| Their coverage of countries at odds to the US elite/national
| security state ranges from being slanted to suspect word choice
| to falsehood by omissions to complete lies.
|
| They are open about being a mouthpiece and an advocate and not
| impartial. Among the 100s (since 1843) of false coverage of
| countries on the receiving end of Anglo Saxon imperial aggression
| and genocide (English-speaking countries etc) look at their fake
| coverage of the coup in Chile and more recently the one in
| Bolivia. With non-white and non-European countries like Syria,
| Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Vietnam etc they openly advocate their
| destruction. (worth looking into their archives for those who
| want to study manufactured consent)
|
| This helps serve the policy objectives of lowering non-white
| populations:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement
| jpttsn wrote:
| You're suggesting the Economist is open about its globalist
| bias, but meanwhile they also have another secret bias, which
| is white supremacy?
| supernova87a wrote:
| If I took lessons in writing from the Economist, my writing would
| appear to take a few scant observations and then apparently jump
| to suggest what the world should do about a certain long unsolved
| problem as if no one else had thought about that before, like
| some sophomore at Oxford just discovering the 2nd chapter of a
| textbook.
|
| I find that style of writing a little bit obnoxious, so I have
| not taken my lessons from the Economist.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| A lot more would be revealed by contrary examples, either yours
| or those you greatly prefer, stylistically, over The Economist.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The first lesson in the article gave me a junior high flashback.
| We were supposed to organize our paragraphs into the form:
|
| Introductory Sentence
|
| Concrete detail
|
| Commentary
|
| Commentary
|
| Concrete detail
|
| Commentary
|
| Commentary
|
| Concrete detail
|
| Commentary
|
| Commentary
|
| Concluding sentence
|
| --- next paragraph
|
| It works, but writing that way was such a toil. Sometimes there
| is no value in 2 sentences of commentary and sometimes more
| explanation is needed. Sometimes it's best to present three
| details all at once, instead of one by one. My teacher lifted the
| requirement on me after I ignored the rule but still wrote a
| quality essay.
| asdff wrote:
| You gotta learn the rules before you learn which ones to break
| eli wrote:
| The AP has some useful writing manuals beyond the styleguide they
| are famous for. The _Guide To News Writing_ is a great place to
| start and somewhere I 've got a book of just examples of ledes
| (first sentences).
|
| Being able to write in this style is useful for all kinds writing
| besides reporting the news.
| macintux wrote:
| In high school, there were two magazines I'd read regularly: _The
| Atlantic_ had an absurdly inexpensive subscription price (I think
| it was $14 for 2 years at the time) and _The Economist_ was...not
| inexpensive, so I'd just pick up a copy when I was fortunate
| enough to visit a bookstore that carried it.
|
| The Economist was the only magazine in my life I would regularly
| read cover to cover. Every article revealed something I didn't
| know about the world, or about my own country, and the
| information was _dense_. Most articles were just a few
| paragraphs, so I didn't have time to get bored before I'd move on
| to the next one.
| libeclipse wrote:
| I really appreciate how The Economist packs articles full of
| facts and information, allowing you to form your own opinion,
| while still arguing an opinion of their own.
| peter303 wrote:
| Fortunately The Atlantic is essentially free online if you
| erase cookies when it says you run out of articles. I am glad
| that Mrs Steve Lynn Powell Jobs used her billions to support
| this great magazine.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Such a shame that the paper quality became totally thrash [1].
|
| The transparent/semi-translucent paper they switched to made it
| absolutely unreadable for me. Such a shame, I really enjoyed
| reading it. I read some articles online, but it's not the same
| as having a magazine in my hands.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Why-is-The-Economist-printed-on-such-t...
| xycodex wrote:
| I'm not too sure about the paper quality/weight/foldability
| tradeoff, but I appreciate the fact that it's really light
| and I can just fold it in half and stuff it into my inside
| jacket pocket and go out and read it over coffee.
| csomar wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's universal; where I live, the US embassy
| offers free magazines for anyone (and, yes, they have The
| Economist). The downside is that they are a couple months old.
| CalChris wrote:
| Yeah, they usually have a library. I read the papers at the
| library at the American Embassy in Prague. Apparently Kafka
| used to work there.
|
| https://d2v9ipibika81v.cloudfront.net/uploads/sites/22/2015/.
| ..
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I did the same thing when I was roughly 15 or so. What was
| funny about The Economist subscription at the time was that it
| asked you your honorific (Mr., Mrs., etc.) and I checked off
| "Sir." thinking of it as harmless high school mischief.
|
| Little did I know that I inadvertently set off a tracking
| campaign into whom they resold subscriber data to. I would get
| all sorts of promotional magazines and other unsolicited mail
| for "Sir. Zach Aysan" or similar. Still makes me chuckle to
| this day.
| loughnane wrote:
| I did exactly the same. It's still funny.
| ghaff wrote:
| I've attended a few The Economist events. To an American,
| especially given the current sensitivities around titles and
| gender roles, The Economist is hilarious in the vast number
| it gives you to choose from and perhaps "Other" isn't even a
| choice. Yep Mr. or Viscount it is is.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| I read the Economist back when I used to travel a lot as a
| backpacker. Its content acquainted me with the issues of other
| countries in a way no other publication could have done.
|
| Some travelers I met were surprised when they talked with the
| younger me about their country's healthcare reform, the
| valuation of their currency or their mroe vocal political
| leaders.
| JackFr wrote:
| Among other things, in the US, the Economist was the only news
| magazine which covered Africa and Latin America consistently.
|
| If you were literate and interested, after being exposed to the
| Economist it was impossible to read Time, Newsweek or US News &
| World Report. It was eye-opening just how bad they were.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| I was surprised how accurate they were in describing the
| high-net-worth families in Central America in a recent
| article:
|
| https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/04/03/the-
| influe...
|
| Not even local media would have been able to describe it like
| The Economist did.
| nine_k wrote:
| I suspect that local media might have enough information,
| but are _uncomfortable_ to write about certain topics.
| Being seriously disliked by powerful men is sometimes
| unaffordable to a media outlet.
| mandogcat wrote:
| Right,and the anonymous articles help.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| And anonymizing the source too.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| From the countries mentioned in the article, Honduras
| might have the least free media.
| macintux wrote:
| US News & World Report in particular was embarrassingly bad,
| but I felt the worst when traveling abroad and the only US
| newspaper I saw in some locations was USA Today. What they
| must think of us.
| ghaff wrote:
| USA Today was deliberately created as a colorful low-brow
| but not really tabloid-y paper that, among other places,
| tended to be the paper of choice to leave outside your
| hotel room in the morning. My favorite quote about it was
| something to the effect of: "It's the newspaper for people
| who find the nightly news too challenging to understand."
| jfengel wrote:
| I remember USA Today being controversial when it was
| introduced. Its stories were so short that they often
| weren't generally continued past the front page, which
| seemed absurd at the time.
|
| Today many people don't read past the headlines, and the
| pacing of USA Today seems positively languid and
| scholarly.
| CalChris wrote:
| Back in the day when the _International Herald Tribune_ was
| publishing, I 'd read it. It was 8 pages and available at
| most train stations. It was bits of the _NY Times_ and
| _Washington Post_. I don 't think it had any original
| content but the ads were interesting. The _USA Today_ was
| available but it really wasn 't any good.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I have been reading the economist for 4+ years now, my
| primary reason for reading it are having an outside view on
| the US which delivers a perspective alot of US based
| newspapers don't have. (I'm based in the US).
|
| In addition they have alot of military/technology coverage
| and extensive China coverage. US news really did not cover
| the fact that Xi Jinping is now China's leader for life(2018,
| which is huge news) the economist wrote several articles
| about this. They also tend to do pretty well with macro trend
| analysis and predictions.
|
| Lastly there are no long form/in the weeds articles which I
| just really don't have time for, think vanity Fair, Atlantic,
| and the New Yorker.
| [deleted]
| krrrh wrote:
| In the nineties I was targeted by a direct mail campaign they
| ran on Canadians with the eye-catching title "Un-American",
| in which then made the pitch that it was a reliable source of
| world news that wasn't overly dominated by a US perspective.
| It worked, and I subscribed for a decade.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I too enjoy the economist. Their level-headed style and
| combination of numeracy and humanism are welcome in an often
| dogmatic and sensationalist media climate.
|
| The tools that you describe are how all news should be written!
| The inverted pyramid of information -- broad but important bits
| at the top, details at the bottom -- is a structure I remember
| from my high school newspaper class.
|
| I do want to point out that there's a fine line between using
| precise words and being intelligible to the public. "Traduced,"
| as you introduce in example, isn't a common word where I'm from,
| and could be expressed in other ways (slandered, defamed,
| maligned) that are in more common circulation. A case of 'know
| thine audience' I suppose.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > where I'm from Where is that? And is maligned that much more
| common than traduced? Is either one intelligible to the average
| person in the street (wherever they are from)?
|
| Anyway, I quite like to read a word that I have never used, it
| enriches my vocabulary.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I'm from the West Coast, USA. I'm familiar with The Economist
| and find that their vocabulary selection trends toward words
| used in the Commonwealth. "Traduced" is far more commonly
| used in the UK than in the US, if use in search terms is to
| be believed [1]
|
| I also enjoy learning new words, but the point of the article
| was how to communicate clearly, not how to enrich your
| readers' vocabularies.
|
| [1]: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore/GEO_MAP/1617643
| 200?...
|
| [edit: and here's a comparison map showing that maligned is
| searched for over traduced at a ratio of 7:3 in the UK, 9:1
| in the US. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=traduce
| d,maligned... ]
| pessimizer wrote:
| Also, "traduce" is euphemistic, so you can't be sure what
| it means even if you know the Latin. In romance languages
| it just means "translate."
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| But in English it does not mean translated. In that sense
| it is a false friend, it shares etymology with Romanian
| traduce but not meaning.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Saying it is a false friend is just a repetition of what
| I just said. In English it is a euphemism, like "going
| out" means being involved in a romance. _Traduce-_ means
| to translate, as a euphemism it becomes to distort. The
| only way to know what the word means in English is to
| know what the word means in English; there 's no hinting
| other than context, and the contexts of the two possible
| meanings could be very similar.
|
| It's obviously not an incorrect usage, just an
| unnecessarily alienating one.
| great_reversal wrote:
| Thought this was about writing tools in Go...
| sandGorgon wrote:
| This is the latest version of the Economist Style Guide -
| http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/sty...
| alister wrote:
| That's a teaser version (a "look inside" as Amazon would say).
| It's the first 20 pages of a guide that's at least 261 pages
| long.
| sandGorgon wrote:
| well the previous version is available in all its entirety at
| archive.org
|
| https://archive.org/details/EconomistBooksTheEconomistStyleG.
| ..
| ajcp wrote:
| Only 20 pages, that's confidence.
| martingoodson wrote:
| I highly recommend subscribing to the Economist. Every week I
| flip through the edition on the app, saving interesting-looking
| articles. Then I _listen_ to the saved articles in order when I'm
| cooking or whatever. It's like having a personalised, world-class
| podcast on topics of your choosing. I only recently realised that
| all of the articles are made available in audio form to
| subscribers. The subscription is a steal for this service.
| bolzano wrote:
| While The Economist has some redeeming factors and is often worth
| reading, it should be noted that it is not the objective
| dispassionate newspaper it claims to be. The Financial Times is
| far more honest about its commitments.
|
| It is one of the main journals of the liberal business elite and
| has a fairly awful (and fascinating) anti labour history. It
| cloaks itself in a casual Oxbridge patina of disinterested
| expertise, but at its core, it radically advocates for liberal
| international capital, deregulation and privatisation.
| Neoliberalism to use a modern polysyllabic word.
|
| Its stance towards the Irish famine should give one a taste of
| its beliefs, and they haven't changed much in 170 years or so...
| There have been some wonderful articles written on this
| publication, and I'd urge anyone to take a look at the
| publication from another angle.
|
| [1] What the Economist doesn't tell you -
| https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/what-the-economi...
|
| [2] "The Economics of the Colonial Cringe," about The Economist
| magazine; Washington Post, 1991 -
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/1991/10/-quot...
|
| [3] How The Economist Thinks -
| https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/05/how-the-economist-thi...
| martingoodson wrote:
| This is from a recent edition-is it 'radically advocating' for
| deregulation?
|
| 'Today big tech is in disrepute, not unlike banks after the
| Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the situation in 2008. In both
| cases, regulators marched in. [...] Lawmakers and regulators
| should apply that ethos by imposing similar obligations on the
| tech titans'
| anonu wrote:
| I've been a long-time reader of the Economist - probably
| started reading it around age 13 before they went full color
| (an event that made me think they would lose a bit of their
| sober reporting). Over the years I've picked up on their
| neoliberal stance on world affairs - they are not a neutral
| party by any means. They push some strong opinions and often
| venture into predictions on future political events that, more
| often than not in recent years, have turned out flat wrong.
| tlaagag wrote:
| From an ideological of view, the Economist is a prime example of
| things that, in my opinion, are not very like-able about "the
| anglophone world". So it's probably only consequent to learn
| english with it and immerse oneself in the proper mindset along
| the way.
| hnmullany wrote:
| The reason why the Economist articles all read the same is that
| they go through a process called "subbing" or sub-editing by the
| same small group of editors who own the Economist's "voice".
|
| I interned at the Economist one summer in college and wrote two
| articles for it - the published articles bore a small
| relationship to what I had submitted. The sub-editors seemed to
| be mostly George Smiley-type Oxford and Cambridge PhD's of a
| certain age with an eclectic range of expertises, as far as I
| recall.
| bambax wrote:
| Letters to the editor probably go through the same meat
| grinder.
|
| I sent a comment once, that was published. It had been entirely
| rewritten, with almost no loss of meaning but complete overhaul
| of style, and no indication that it had been the case.
|
| I didn't mind that it was rewritten, but thought they should
| disclose that fact.
|
| Edit: I mean I think they should make it clearer _to readers_
| that published letters have been rewritten, and in some cases,
| heavily.
| halhod wrote:
| we do. all letters sent in by emailed in get the following
| autoreply:
|
| "The Economist thanks you for your letter, which has been
| passed to the author of the article. _All letters are edited_
| if selected for publication either in print or online.
|
| We will need to know where you are writing from, so please
| ensure you have supplied the name of the city, town or
| village and the country if that is not obvious.
|
| If you do not wish your letter to be published send an e-mail
| promptly to letters@economist.com."
| throw14082020 wrote:
| That sounds insane. You want to rewrite a comment and still
| pin it on the comments author? Sounds North Korean esque,
| if the movie "The Interview" is a good representation of
| that.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The town I grew up in had a local weekly newspaper that
| published unedited letters. It was fun -- basically an
| analog message board.
|
| One problem is that normal humans don't write concisely.
| The other is that the Economist is a global
| publication... you probably would not be happy with long-
| form musings of Johnny Random from Papua New Guinea.
| You're opting in for highbrow British style.
| ectopod wrote:
| Every newspaper that I've ever read does this. There will
| be a blurb on the letters page saying something like "We
| reserve the right to edit letters". It's clear to both
| readers and correspondents.
|
| If you don't like the terms, don't engage.
|
| Edited to add: newspapers in the UK take libel law
| seriously so you have some confidence they won't grossly
| misrepresent your views.
| TuringTest wrote:
| It still doesn't make sense to attribute to a reader some
| words they didn't write.
|
| Also there's a difference between the expectation that
| the letter can be truncated or just the gist of it
| extracted for reasons of space, and entire sentences or
| paragraphs rewritten in full. I would have never expected
| the latter even with a "right to edit letters reserved"
| disclaimer.
| Veen wrote:
| That's what editors do. Everything you have read in a
| published book, magazine, or newspaper has been edited
| and often substantially rewritten by someone whose name
| is not on the cover or byline. Letters pages aren't
| comment threads; they're part of the publication and that
| means they're edited for style and content, just like
| everything else.
|
| (As someone who writes for a living, I can tell you that
| it takes a little getting used to, especially when an
| editor butchers a sentence you're pleased with. But it's
| part of the process you learn to accept eventually -- and
| they were probably right.)
| dylan604 wrote:
| How I miss the days of reading text that has been edited.
| Today's websites seem to have completely eliminated the
| editing stage before release. One of my big pet peeves is
| when multiple authors are contributing where you're
| reading the article, and then the next author's section
| comes in recapping what you've just read like it was
| meant to be another stand alone article. There is so much
| redundant information that an editor would have caught
| easily. It also implies to me that nobody is actually
| reading the article about to be released from start to
| end, nor do they read it aloud. That was a proofreading
| tip from long ago as it makes the mind slow down instead
| of auto-correcting when reading quietly.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes, and while I generally get given final review on
| things these days, if I were working on a publication
| with tight deadlines, I wouldn't expect that. And I
| mostly don't do a great job with headlines anyway so I'm
| mostly happy to have editors throw away whatever I put in
| as a placeholder :-)
|
| I do occasionally revert changes when I'm reviewing--
| usually because I wrote something poorly and an editor
| misinterpreted--but I reject relatively few suggestions.
| I figure that if I wrote something that confused my
| editor or they just didn't like it, a lot of readers will
| feel similarly.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Katha Pollitt in a 1997 panel discussion discussing the
| difference in writing relatively unedited for
| (comparatively) small-circ publications such as _The
| Nation_ and the heavily-edited, mass-market, advertising-
| friendly world of _Glamour_.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=fkLX58ZWbWw&t=14m20s
|
| (From 14m20s -- 16m30s)
| Closi wrote:
| The problem is that a letter that makes an excellent
| point might not make it with the required berevity and
| clarity.
|
| A letter to the editor might read:
|
| > I saw on your article about the size of foodstuffs that
| food items are not getting smaller - actually people are
| just getting bigger. Very interesting article, quite
| funny and relevant as I've been collecting food items
| since I was a child and can confirm that this isn't
| always true. I've got a few exapmles where it holds, but
| I also have a kit kat from when I was 18 (born 1979) that
| used to be 500g and now they are 250g as standard. I'm a
| big fan and this is the first time I have spotted a huge
| glaring error! Please explain that one!
|
| Clearly that would need to be reframed. I'm not
| particularly good, but I can see why a newspaper might
| want to shorten it:
|
| > In last week's article The Economist argued that
| foodstuffs were not getting smaller, however I own a
| standard kit-kat from the 1997 that is double the size of
| ones available in shops today. Thoughts?
|
| The above is probably an improvement from a readers
| perspective, conveys the points of the original message,
| and they aren't usually attributed to a specific,
| identifiable person anyway (usually something like John
| from London) so I don't think there is any huge scandal
| here.
| Emma_Goldman wrote:
| The London Review of Books doesn't, and it has the best
| letters I've read.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| LRB and other publications of that caliber receive enough
| submissions in their preferred style so as to only
| require light use of [sic] for errors. LRB letter writers
| are highly motivated to have their words be selected for
| publication.
|
| The Economist wishes to publish from a wider set of
| contributors and its house style is harder for that group
| to imitate.
| throw14082020 wrote:
| Is "everyone does it" a good argument?. Clear to all? Not
| according to @bambax. Also, libel law? Why are you
| bringing up libel law. Manipulation of comments and fake
| reviews isn't libel.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Manipulation of comments and fake reviews isn't libel.
|
| To the extent the comment is atrributed to the author
| whose words were altered it can be.
|
| An published, attributed comment is a published fact
| claim about what the author has expressed, and if it is
| false and damaging can be libel.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| IIRC misattribution of quotes can be libelous in some
| jurisdictions if it causes harm to reputation.
| nindalf wrote:
| I'm surprised GP didn't expect that the letter would be
| edited.
|
| One of my letters was published. I fully expected that it
| would be edited and was pleased with the result. You can
| see both versions here - https://gist.github.com/nindalf/12
| a533f6ff64d7f146845f289acd.... I thought the edited version
| conveys the intent well.
| munchbunny wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the comparison!
|
| I think I agree, the edited version conveys the meaning
| and intent well. I assume the links were removed as a
| matter of form factor/medium.
| rusteh1 wrote:
| That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| Seconded!
|
| I agree that this is smart editing that preserves the
| original meaning well. The one decision I question is
| simplifying your nicely-phrased "Most programmers spend
| most of their time attaching these disparate blocks
| together" to just "most programmers spend their time
| [...]"
| specialist wrote:
| If I was King: Default assumption that statements are
| generalizations, unless explicitly stated otherwise. To
| preempt pedantry.
|
| eg
|
| Programmers => Programmers in general, with many obvious
| exceptions, too numerous to list in a brief reply.
|
| All Programmers => All Programmers
|
| PS- Hmmm. Now I wonder if any style guides cover this?
| Surely some do.
| devtosales wrote:
| I understand that Americans call LEGO 'LEGOS' because you
| don't just play with one brick, you play with multiple.
| You're (incorrectly) using the plural form.
|
| If the above is correct, why would you refer to a single
| block of LEGO as LEGOS'?
|
| Also, would you consider using the word LEGO, as it's
| written on the box, from now on?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Disclosed to the reader, not to the letter writer.
| bambax wrote:
| Yes, that was my point and I should have made it better.
|
| (Also, there's a difference between editing and
| rewriting.)
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| Before my internet addiction distracted me from it, I made a
| sport of writing letters to newspapers, and my success rate
| for over a decade was about 8/10 published to submitted. I
| had one or two in the Economist, with many more in the
| Financial Times, and others in lesser known papers. They're
| all in a drawer somewhere now as some very humble personal
| trophies.
|
| However, my final one was edited so horrendously and
| offensively in print that the only charitable interpretation
| was that English was not the letters editor's first language.
| After a few emails back and forth, and the terse revelation
| from a very piqued editor that English was in fact her first
| language, she graciously corrected the online version. My
| advice to anyone who wants emulate the house style of The
| Economist is that they should read P.G. Wodehouse first.
|
| I stopped writing letters after that because it signalled a
| shift in culture at the papers, where the people working for
| them didn't seem to have the same relationship to truth they
| once appeared to. The feeling of opening that salmon coloured
| paper to find your letter in it (with only modest surprise)
| and giving your morning coffee a smug celebratory sip is one
| of the things upvotes on the internet have not yet been able
| to replace.
| RotaryTelephone wrote:
| Now THIS person writes.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Sir, I'm dismayed to learn that you have developed an
| addiction to the InterWebs. I would have expected the
| business model of said Webs (arrant nonsense + commcercial
| surveillance) to repel you as it repels any civilised mind.
|
| That said, I personally have learned nothing from the
| Economist either. Wodehousian style or not.
|
| I recommend Stephen Leacock. Yours etc...
| aj7 wrote:
| Heh, heh. As a physicist, I wrote the entire technical
| section on polarization for my small company's optics
| catalog. It got "edited" by the personnel manager, a UT
| Austin English major who was not dumb. Almost had a
| coronary at age 36.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I wonder how many companies have optics catalogs. I
| needed a mirror with a reflective front surface (instead
| of inside or on the back where the light has to go
| through the glass on a normal mirror) to do what they did
| in Tim's Vermeer (the simple mirror version, not the full
| lens version, although that would be cool if I can figure
| out the parts I need). Anyway, they (Edmunds) later sent
| me a full catalog with all kinds of laser stuff I don't
| understand with detailed educational information about
| them and how to set up proper measurement systems and so
| on.
| zikzak wrote:
| I had to run a job ad for a programmer so I took the
| template provided by HR, added my list of buzzwords and
| acronyms, and corrected the many factual, grammatical,
| and spelling errors in the original document.
|
| They ran my ad but the only part that varied from the
| template was my list if "tech skills". Unfortunately,
| this meant the job ad was "pre-covid" so it stated we do
| not work remotely, you must be local, etc. Sigh.
| mssundaram wrote:
| Even in this short sample comment I enjoyed your writing.
| And I agree, that sounds much more satisfying than updoots
| mssundaram wrote:
| I'm mightily confused by the downvotes for the compliment
| i wrote
| ycombinete wrote:
| My guess: it's the word "updoot" that people are
| downvoting.
|
| Discussion about the voting on comments is generally
| discouraged[0]:
|
| "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| aj7 wrote:
| Can't stand the final sentence witticisms. Reduces the
| credibility of the entire article. You can almost hear those
| Oxford and Cambridge PhD's chortling about their own
| cleverness. And no byline is a form of slavery.
| faichai wrote:
| > No byline is a form of slavery
|
| Don't be ridiculous. This is a feature not a bug. It helps
| discourage sensationalism and encourage a sober viewpoint
| that's not designed to generate Twitter or Instagram
| followers. I wish more news sources would do this.
|
| With you on the witticisms though
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Ah, so all the crazy stuff Ive seen from them I should blame on
| the editors and not the individual writers? Good to know, of
| course just by reading it you know its the Oxbridge types in
| charge, and I dont consider that a good thing...
| rmk wrote:
| This is common. Most publication houses, including magazines
| and newspapers, have a 'house style' that is enforced by an
| editorial staff.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| They can probably be replaced by a neural network in time,
| leaving humans to just doing content reviews.
| ChrisLTD wrote:
| Isn't that more or less what Grammarly Premium can do? I'm
| not a subscriber, but their site says it offers suggestions
| on tone and clarity.
| formercoder wrote:
| I'd bet against this. Neural networks still don't actually
| understand the text at all. I would imagine true
| understanding is required for this task. You can't get to
| the moon climbing progressively higher trees.
| dominotw wrote:
| Doesn't 'the voice' evolve overtime though? How can a
| neural network evolve on its own.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| Train it every year on the senior editors' publication.
| sorokod wrote:
| The publications that were replaced by a neural network?
| philtar wrote:
| So we can't get rid of the senior editors after all?
| belinder wrote:
| Why get rid of them? Automatisation should not mean
| getting rid of people, it should mean letting them do
| other things. In this scenario the editors could spend
| more time on their own writing instead of having to look
| at junior writer's texts
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Editors are not necessarily investigators.
|
| (metaphor/similar example follows)
|
| In the same sense that someone who reviews a (IT)
| technical procedure is not necessarily a systems
| administrator, but someone who sees things from an angle
| to ensure RACI model is followed throughout without any
| generalizations such as "backup is taken" (by who? using
| which tools? which systems/data are backed up? how often?
| how long do we keep the tapes? how often do we trash the
| tapes? where do we store the tapes?). I haven't taken a
| backup for more than a decade, but I would shred a backup
| procedure to pieces. If you remove me from the review
| cycle, I won't go back to writing procedures.
| xapata wrote:
| Reinforcement learning.
| elcomet wrote:
| You could do small random variations (evolving the
| network) and assign some score to them (either number of
| sales, or scores by the staff)
| dominotw wrote:
| Hopefully their editors are operating on principles other
| than increasing sales.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _How can a neural network evolve on its own._
|
| Same way as humans? Via training on new inputs?
| dominotw wrote:
| > Via training on new inputs?
|
| There are no new inputs in this case because we got
| replaced editors with NN.
| coldtea wrote:
| Nothing stops us from feeding them the work of human
| editors in 2000000 other publications...
|
| Or their own work, as ranked by readers (e.g. their past
| posts that had the more views and better engagement).
| RobertKerans wrote:
| No. This is drastically missing the point of what The
| Economist (or almost any media org) is. It isn't trying
| to be an average from 20000000 other publications, or
| what an average of readers think, or what had good
| engagement stats (though obviously the latter is a good
| target for the application of analytical software). It's
| not a neutral voice, or some down-the-middle average of
| what readers liked. It's an entity with its own political
| goals.
| RobertKerans wrote:
| It's not even vaguely similar to a person, so how would
| that work? ln this example, if you had a hypothetical AI
| that understood the UK class system + the political
| system + the press system + the way these interlocking
| relationships work from a particular elite PoV then sure,
| but that's magical thinking. The actual written style is
| a small part of that; the other things are the inputs.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _ln this example, if you had a hypothetical AI that
| understood the UK class system + the political system +
| the press system + the way these interlocking
| relationships work from a particular elite PoV then sure,
| but that 's magical thinking._
|
| It doesn't have to understand any of those in any "human"
| sense, where it would be able to articulate what it
| understood on a meta level, etc.
|
| It would just have to reinforce the right patterns and
| fuzzy connections that lead to success in writing
| credible looking articles....
| RobertKerans wrote:
| > It would just have to reinforce the right patterns and
| fuzzy connections that lead to success in writing
| _credible looking articles_
|
| We're probably at a point where we can manufacture
| shallow fakes of the current _writing_ style, and I 'm
| sure techniques like this will become prevalent (because
| convenience), but I feel you're missing the point of what
| I'm saying. It _does_ need to understand these things. If
| it doesn 't, then what it is is a mechanical reproduction
| of a _current_ style of writing: that 's a completely
| different category of thing, it's not even close to
| similar.
| koyote wrote:
| This is very similar to how code bases are 'edited' to fit
| the coding style of the team/project/company.
|
| I guess the main difference is that code editing is done in
| collaboration with the author (code review) as opposed to an
| editor.
|
| If refactoring code did not have the potential side-effect of
| changing its run-time behaviour (or performance) I'd argue
| that software engineering would also benefit from a 'code
| editor' role :)
| rmk wrote:
| Most companies institute code reviews and invest in tooling
| that stops nonstandard code (formatting and convention-
| wise) getting into the codebase, once they grow large
| enough. I think these two processes serve the same purpose,
| albeit with numerous exceptions depending on the seniority
| of the committer and reviewer(s) :)
| paganel wrote:
| > The sub-editors seemed to be mostly George Smiley-type Oxford
| and Cambridge PhD's
|
| As an Economist reader for 15 years now and as a big Le Carre
| fan that's exactly how I imagined them to be. Even though after
| the latest editor change there seems to have been a notable
| change in tone/style, most visible (for me) in the US-related
| section (calling a sitting US president names isn't what I
| expected from The Economist).
| raverbashing wrote:
| True. But given the examples in the article this is done in a
| masterful way.
|
| One place that does this, it's obvious and uncreatively done:
| Deutsche Welle for their English articles.
| cromka wrote:
| I am guessing this could come as a side effect of proof-
| reading articles written by authors who don't write in
| English with a native fluency?
| raverbashing wrote:
| Could be (though they have the capability to hire native
| speakers), or maybe they have a very cookie-cutter manual.
| (Not sure their German headlines have the same patterns but
| I think not, or at least it doesn't sound so unnatural)
| mojuba wrote:
| It's probably also why their articles never seem to start with
| _On a gloomy morning of June 22, 2015..._ - the much hated
| opening of so many other magazines who probably think it 's a
| good way of engaging the reader. I hate this style so much. The
| editors who encourage it have no idea how _disengaging_ their
| style is. Kudos to the Economist for not doing this.
| mocha_nate wrote:
| Seriously. When I see that, I do a mini-eyeroll and scroll to
| find the point of the article. The Economist does a good job
| of putting content first.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| If Wikipedia is right
|
| > Smiley was born to middle-class parents
|
| Doesn't sound like the Economist
| unsui wrote:
| In the UK, "Middle Class" is more of a mindset than an
| economic class (although economic class is definitely a part
| of it).
|
| You can think of it more as the US middle-upper-class.
|
| This musical number from the UK comedy "Mongrels" more-or-
| less nails the mindset:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yr4yEguWrw
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Yeah I know the difference between economic and social
| class. I'm saying that's the wrong social class for the
| Economist.
| mandogcat wrote:
| I'm British, have read the Economist in the past and a
| friend of mine interned there. I think "middle class" is
| bang on to describe their audience, which ranges from
| aspirational students to working professionals who want a
| quick news summary with some wit. Not many builders
| (working), dukes (upper) or Oxford faculty (upper middle)
| would be caught reading it. It's definitely seen as
| middlebrow fodder for undergraduates.
| rattray wrote:
| What is the more high brow alternative?
| mandogcat wrote:
| Depends what topic you're going for but the guardian or
| ft, tatler, London or new York review of books, times
| literary supplement etc would be found in eg a London
| club library. Economist too, it's a light but fun read.
| frankzinger wrote:
| Are you really saying The Guardian is higher-brow than
| The Economist? As a regular reader of both I would never
| have guessed it. (I'm not British, if it matters.)
| mandogcat wrote:
| It's probably the highest brow of the mainstream (ie, non
| FT) newspapers. It's seen as less try hard and
| pseudointellectual than the Economist i think.
| mongrol-smush wrote:
| The Guardian is probably the most often quoted
| publication in Private Eye's "Pseuds Corner", a regular
| selection of unintentionally amusing psuedo-intellectual
| writing.
| mandogcat wrote:
| Oh no doubt, I'm just talking about general perception.
| The Economist hides its pseudiness better, behind the
| simple writing style (which I enjoy).
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| My perhaps incorrect impression has been that middle class
| means something a bit different in a country with royalty.
| ghaff wrote:
| Back when they were still moderately important
| publications, Time and Newsweek were probably similar
| although more US-centric and mainstream. But similar in
| that they tended to draw from the Ivies and other
| establishment schools. Likely significant overlap with the
| Times and the Post.
| bshimmin wrote:
| _" Scuppered" means to prevent from succeeding--also to sink a
| ship deliberately._
|
| I was quite interested to learn this, because I would always have
| used the word "scuttled" for the deliberate sinking of a ship.
| nindalf wrote:
| What I like most about the Economist - the obituaries. Each one
| is about a person who I hadn't heard of before, but after reading
| it I wish I had.
|
| Sometimes it's the story of an unsung hero, whose life story
| shines a new perspective on an event we're aware of. For example,
| the recent obituary of Nikolai Antoshkin, the general who led the
| response to the Chernobyl reactor.
|
| Other times, it's an ordinary person who lived their life in an
| ordinary way. But in the wider context, their lives have
| extraordinary meaning. I'm reminded of the obituary of the last
| speaker of the Eyak language, which was as much an obituary for
| the language as it was for them.
|
| OP talks a lot about the style and how they keep it simple, but
| there is so much beauty in that simplicity.
| peter303 wrote:
| The NYTimes has wonderful obituaries too. In conventional
| newspapers junior reporters write these and it is pretty boiler
| plate. In superior news sources these are works of art by
| senior journalists.
| klelatti wrote:
| My favourite is still Jack Scott and Reg Varney (a British
| weather forecaster and the star of the sitcom "On the Buses")
| in one week in 2008 .
|
| Just so unexpected as subjects for the Economist and
| beautifully done in capturing the spirit of a certain period in
| British life.
|
| [1] https://www.economist.com/obituary/2008/12/04/jack-scott-
| and...
| lenocinor wrote:
| They made a book of them in 2008 if you (or anyone else) is
| interested.
| rmk wrote:
| The Economist is a great magazine ("newspaper", as they like to
| call themselves). The emphasis is on presenting facts and educate
| the reader without any of the proselytizing and moralizing of the
| major American newspapers. I also love the Wall Street Journal,
| which is the American newspaper that comes closest to The
| Economist, save its increasingly shrill editorials and opinion
| columns.
|
| Can anyone who grew up here explain why Americans prefer partisan
| media? It boggles my mind and is something I have failed to
| understand. Elsewhere in the world, being biased is taken as an
| insult, whereas here, news organizations seem to take pride in
| it!
| kristianc wrote:
| It's incorrect to state that the Economist doesn't have a bias:
| it leans consistently toward free trade, free markets, open
| borders, and international institutions.
|
| Some of the limits are due to the way that media is regulated
| in others countries (vs. not regulated at all in the US). In
| the UK for instance, the major broadcasters have a public
| service remit, and can be challenged easily via libel laws,
| regulation etc if they print something which is overtly
| incorrect. In the US, that is less the case which means that
| news has evolved into a kind of entertainment rather than a
| source of information.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Their position is the globalist hyper-elite (like Martin Wolf
| in the FT...they all go to Bildeberg). This overlaps heavily
| with the free market viewpoint but over the past five years
| or so, it has become heavily diluted in some areas (for
| example, regulations and fiscal policy...their view tends to
| match with whatever the IMF thinks, and tends to be fairly
| reactionary because these ideas have a history of not
| working...tbh, these views aren't coherent anymore, they make
| no sense).
|
| It is fair to say that once you descend below the editorials,
| you will find more interesting viewpoints. But all of the
| leaders and editorial pieces are totally anodyne. Imo, this
| is an editorial decision that changed in 2015, and it has got
| significantly worse.
| jfim wrote:
| It still has a slant to its reporting, though. It's very
| neoliberal and almost always calls for deregulation, free
| markets, free trade, and globalization.
|
| It's pretty factual if you ignore that slant though.
| louisvgchi wrote:
| You can also read The Economist as a report for middle class
| and above capitalists with disposal income to track where world
| events and trends are going in order to make good investments
| and business decisions. At the end of the newspaper is the
| stocks and stats, but the whole thing is a report.
| mrwh wrote:
| The UK has outrageously partisan newspapers and always has, the
| Economist is one of the few publications that looks vaguely
| non-partisan (and as pointed out by others, it's more about
| being up-front in its classical liberal position). TV news is
| far more even, by law (but I think that's about to change,
| sadly).
| alchemism wrote:
| I believe media de-regulation exacerbated the effect.
|
| On a more philosophical level one might say that all media is
| biased - and that those who nakedly display their subjectivity
| are easier to parse using critical analysis than those who mask
| it through centrist positioning in an ideological spectrum.
| visarga wrote:
| Lately reasoned debate has become very difficult on account of
| identity politics and social justice. It's as if the concept of
| debate is biased against them so they refuse to play the game.
| And they believe all disagreement with them to be illegitimate.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| The economist is 'biased'. It was actually founded to campaign
| against the UK's Corn Laws in 1843.
|
| However although it has kept the same free trade agenda it is
| refreshingly open minded and is not tied to dogma, or political
| parties.
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| The Economist is extremely moralizing. It represents the point
| of view of a city dweller with a high paying job who buys into
| liberal sensibilities but smugly thinks himself wiser and more
| prudent than the radicals on the streets. He is a modern day
| Girondist, at times alarmed to find his kind under the
| guillotine ( _we are on the same side!_ he might protest) but
| finding comfort in a magazine that reminds him he is part of
| the moral and economic elite who really know how to run things.
|
| The political viewpoint of The Economist has shifted. Twelve
| years ago it was right-liberal, today it is left-liberal, but
| that is only because the above character has shifted in his
| views.
| gxqoz wrote:
| Yeah my college MBA bro roommate for some reason got a
| subscription he never read (circa 2006). I'd occasionally
| read it and almost completely rejected its politics at the
| time.
|
| I got my own subscription a few years ago and now regularly
| read it. Most of its politics now line up with my own. I'm
| sure I've changed some, but the paper definitely has changed
| as well.
| astrange wrote:
| Are you American? US news is actually pretty good; the NYTimes
| is full of bad articles but it's still a world-class newspaper.
|
| Meanwhile, UK and Australian media are awful, full of Murdoch
| sockpuppet papers that constantly lie about everything in order
| to get you to hate immigrants and vote Tory/Liberal. WSJ is a
| Murdoch paper but they have to sell to bankers, who at least
| professionally need to know the truth, which is why only the
| opinion section is nuts. UK papers are like the New York Post
| if it had less than no ethics.
| mediaman wrote:
| The Economist certainly has an ideological bias.
|
| However, unlike many publications, they are fairly forthcoming
| about it, and are clear about their position.
|
| I don't agree with all of their positions (though I agree with
| most), but I most of all appreciate that they don't really try
| to bury opinion into "objective" reporting.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| To add to this, I find that they are quite ready to examine
| the challenges to their position and are willing to give
| other viewpoints credit, especially in their observations.
| Empathizing with another side's point of view even if you
| don't agree with their approach is the first step to finding
| common ground, and I enjoy that they consistently exhibit
| this in their editorials.
| viburnum wrote:
| There's an excellent book about The Economist called
| "Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist."
| Here's a good review:
|
| https://newrepublic.com/article/155962/liberalism-at-large-b...
| mncharity wrote:
| I've heard it described as "Fleet Street cocktail party", for
| anticipating where topics will land across insightful-to-
| clueless.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Well, The Atlantic _used_ to be pretty balanced, but since Mrs
| Jobs took over they 've veered to the left too.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| The economist is very heavily biased towards global capitalism,
| and they present many strong cases in favour of particular
| political paths. I'm not sure why so many of their readers see
| them as neutral, I suspect it's due to the high brow nature of
| the writing.
|
| At the end of the day there is no way to produce a non-biased
| publication, you're buying into the stories the publishers
| choose to publish (fact based or not), your opinion is likely
| formed before you read the magazine.
| mrwh wrote:
| The way I read it, the Economist is the newspaper of global
| capitalism, that's their position. But they are still
| evidence based, they don't think they can have their own
| facts (unlike it must be said the modern US right).
| selectodude wrote:
| I love the Economist, but they're not "non-partisan". They're
| simply upfront about their bias.
| nxc18 wrote:
| I think that's the point, though. They have a biased
| worldview - they own that and highlight it regularly - but
| that bias doesn't align with any American political party,
| and I don't get the sense that it is particularly well
| aligned with existing parties in the UK either.
| selectodude wrote:
| They're Lib-Dems.
| twic wrote:
| But only by exclusion. The Economist speaks from a
| classical/neo liberal viewpoint. Civil liberties, free
| markets, laissez faire, technocracy. Labour is too
| statist for them, and the Conservatives are currently too
| populist (and incompetent). The Economist's position
| lines up pretty well with the Orange Book wing of the
| Lib-Dems [1], but much less well with the SDP / social
| liberal wing.
|
| They have backed all three major parties in general
| elections in the last twenty years [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Book:_Reclai
| ming_Li...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial
| _stance...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Non-partisan" is not the same thing as non-ideological.
| mrwh wrote:
| This is a good point. Where the Economist is aligned with,
| say, the Tories, it's because they both support the same
| ideas, not because my-party-is-right. (Nowadays the Tories
| have shifted pretty damn far from those ideas, so it's more
| apparent that it's ideology that the Economist has, not a
| partisan affiliation.)
| ptsneves wrote:
| Indeed. I think from the American point of view they seem to
| be so centered that it can fall both ways.
|
| For the UK i see them clearly as hardcore liberal democrats.
|
| I think that in the south Europe political landscape they
| would be orphaned as there even the center parties are not
| very economically liberal.
| danaliv wrote:
| Around these parts, you have to be yelling and calling people
| names to be considered "partisan." Subtlety is lost on us.
|
| (Not /s, but also not _not_ /s?)
| loughnane wrote:
| I think you can be biased but also non-partisan. Partisan is
| usually referred to in terms of being an the side of a
| particular party. The Economist definitely has its bias, but
| that doesn't align clearly with either the right or the left
| in American politics.
| clairity wrote:
| democrat, republican and green are parties, not right and
| left, which represent an arbitrary dichotomization of a
| complex landscape otherwise irreducible without losing
| critical information. that kind of reductionism, i daresay,
| never leads to meaningful understanding, just loggerheads.
|
| the economist takes a conventional stance of promoting
| policies that favor the already wealthy. that facet of it
| is rather banal and certainly not where the exciting ideas
| for the next millennia are going to emerge from.
| loughnane wrote:
| It's good point: right and left aren't parties.
| Unfortunately it's increasingly feeling that way in
| America; Independents (among which I count myself) don't
| play a meaningful role and polarization as measured by
| congressional voting patterns seems to be the highest
| it's been in decades.
|
| I think it's unfair to say they support policies that
| favor the already wealthy. Certainly they do sometimes,
| but they've opposed tax cuts, supported minimum wage
| increases, etc. I'm ready to be proven wrong but I
| haven't got that impression when I read it.
| clairity wrote:
| > "I think it's unfair to say they support policies that
| favor the already wealthy."
|
| it's not unfair to call a spade a spade. opposing tax
| cuts can be done for a myriad of supportive or
| unsupportive reasons, so that doesn't provide a useful
| counter-argument.
|
| and "minimum wage increases" sounds great on the surface.
| but the underlying purpose of a minimum wage is to paper
| over gross systemic equities that have only grown over
| time and keep us from even discussing policies for
| creating more fair and dynamic markets that would
| naturally distribute wealth more widely and efficiently,
| and neatly obviate such a distortion-producing bandaid of
| a policy.
|
| but the central point is that no significant party and
| nearly no politician is addressing systemic issues that
| has promoted winner-take-all dynamics in our
| politicoeconomy for at least the last 50 years. even
| obamacare was so browbeaten and laden with special
| interest provisions, our healthcare costs have only
| soared, all to append zeroes onto bank accounts that
| abosolutely don't need, and more pointedly don't deserve,
| them.
| astrange wrote:
| > and "minimum wage increases" sounds great on the
| surface. but the underlying purpose of a minimum wage is
| to paper over gross systemic equities that have only
| grown over time and keep us from even discussing policies
| for creating more fair and dynamic markets that would
| naturally distribute wealth more widely and efficiently,
| and neatly obviate such a distortion-producing bandaid of
| a policy.
|
| This is a made up problem that came from economists high
| on their own models. Empirical evidence shows that
| minimum wage increases in the US have almost none of the
| distorting effects they would supposedly have. The
| response from economists has been to make up new models
| that show it's okay actually, up to ~60% of median wage.
|
| Some countries like the Nordics have high incomes despite
| no minimum wage (they have sectoral bargaining unions
| instead) but they should probably get one since it
| increases productivity a little. And Australia's federal
| minimum wage is still higher than any locality in the US
| and yet causes no problems.
| jeegsy wrote:
| > Empirical evidence shows
|
| I imagine there is 'evidence' out there but the empirical
| claim is quite intriguing. Do you have any sources for
| this?
| anthuswilliams wrote:
| It's more than just being upfront about their bias. It's also
| the way they avoid descending into demonizing and name-
| calling. Even when discussing leaders of whom they clearly
| disapprove such as Recep Erdogan, Jair Bolsonaro, and Donald
| Trump, they don't come right out and declare them as
| "lunatics". Instead, they try to write dispassionate analysis
| which often drives readers to the conclusion that they are
| lunatics. This might seem a subtle distinction, but it is a
| marked departure from the shrill tone of many other media
| outfits.
| blago wrote:
| I can only speculate they must've concluded that their bottom
| line is better served by cheerleading 45% of the population
| than constantly disappointing 90% of the population. TL;DR;
| it's more profitable.
|
| Also, lack of regulation. In the US you are a news organization
| if you say that you are news organization. Just like, at least
| colloquially, you are a professor if you teach a class at
| collage level. There is no body, or authority to set standards,
| expectations, and to confer those titles after a vigorous
| process.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Can I subscribe to the Economist without having to call them to
| cancel the subscription?
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| No, at least that was the case when I tried a couple of years
| ago.
| colincooke wrote:
| Yes, I have done so (I have since resubscribed). I believe it
| required an email, or at least some weird looking portal. Not
| as easy as it could be, but certaintly not a call to customer
| service.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Nice, last time I unsubscribed it was a long call of "are you
| sureeeeee???"
|
| I'll probably still use privacy.com to be safe. But good to
| hear they addressed that. I've been thinking of subscribing
| again for a few months.
| Bo0kerDeWitt wrote:
| I sent them an email saying I wanted to cancel and they
| confirmed it a few days later. There was no nonsense involved.
|
| I've since resubscribed.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| I read that news uses a pyramid structure where they say the main
| point first, then increasingly elaborate for anyone who cares
| enough to continue reading. However, news is also famous for
| people only reading the headlines, and skipping the body of an
| article. It seems good for conveying information but bad for
| engagement (although some papers and magazines ramble for pages
| and you never find out what the article is even about because
| it's 70% tangent and human interest)
| peter303 wrote:
| The NYTimes has these endless articles where you scroll 20-30
| pages before reaching the end. Fortunately they have added
| "takeaway" articles where they summarize the five most
| important points of a long story.
| ghaff wrote:
| Strict inverted pyramid style was so that newspapers could
| basically randomly cut an article when they ran out of space in
| the hole the article was filling. A bit of an
| oversimplification but almost literally true in the case of
| wire service copy. Also you lost people at jumps.
|
| Magazines are on longer deadlines and can adopt varying styles.
| That's not to say you hide the lede in the last paragraph, but
| you do have more flexibility in getting to the point.
|
| The Economist, which actually calls itself a newspaper,
| probably is roughly inverted pyramid but not as much as AP copy
| would be.
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| The Economist, a journal that speaks for the British
| millionaires...
| baby wrote:
| This is great! I just rewrote all my chapters' first
| paragraph[^1] using the first advice of this article.
|
| I'll give back by sharing an advice I learned from ptatcek: the
| inverted pyramid.[^2]
|
| Here's some example of what I just re-wrote.
|
| Chapter 2: - I have talked about cryptographic
| primitives in the previous chapter, they are constructions that
| achieve specific security properties and form the building blocks
| of cryptography. - In the first part of this book you will
| learn about several important ones. + Attributing global
| unique identifiers to anything, that's the promise of the first
| cryptographic construction
|
| chapter 3: - In chapter 2, you've learned about
| an interesting construction --hash functions--that on its own
| doesn't provide much, but if used in combination with a secure
| channel allows you to verify the authenticity and integrity of
| some data. + Mix a hash function with a secret key, and
| you obtain something called a *message authentication code
| (MAC)*.
|
| chapter 4: - You've learned about authenticated
| encryption in chapter 4, which is a form of symmetric encryption.
| - This is an extremely useful cryptographic primitive, yet in the
| real-world, there exist many situations where different peers do
| not have a shared secret. + In chapter 4 you learned about
| authenticated encryption, a cryptographic primitive used to
| encrypt data but limited by its symmetry: both sides of a
| connection had to share the same key. + In this chapter,
| I'll lift this restriction by introducing *asymmetric
| encryption*: a primitive to encrypt to someone else's key without
| knowing the key.
|
| chapter 12: - For as far as I can remember, the
| term "crypto" has been used in reference to the field of
| cryptography. - Recently, I have seen its meaning quickly
| changing and being used by more and more people to refer to
| *cryptocurrencies*. + Can cryptography be the basis for a
| new financial system? + This is what cryptocurrencies have
| been trying to answer since at least 2008, when Bitcoin was
| proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto (who to this day has yet to reveal
| their identity).
|
| [^1]: https://www.manning.com/books/real-world-
| cryptography?a_aid=...
|
| [^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
| mimischi wrote:
| Have a look at "The art of writing science" by Kevin W. Plaxco
| [1]. He goes over this and similar techniques in length,
| applying them at the same time.
|
| [1] https://doi.org/10.1002/pro.514
| hankchinaski wrote:
| can anyone recommend any meta-book on writing techniques and
| style? I recently picked up "the elements of eloquence" by
| Forsyth and it's pretty good, but it focuses a lot on rhetorical
| figures and not more higher-level structures like described in
| this article
| n0pe_p0pe wrote:
| Joseph Williams' "Style" is a great one
| marban wrote:
| Also recommend their daily news snack at
| https://www.economist.com/espresso
| nmstoker wrote:
| I respect the writing in the Economist. It's kept to a high
| standard and they put their cases well with evidence as the
| article here highlights. Even the times I don't agree with their
| position, I still respect it.
|
| I wonder how much it helps that their writers are anonymous and
| therefore less likely to go on personal flights of fancy or
| building an argumentative approach. It is perhaps puts the
| individual writer on the backfoot but makes the quality of the
| publication higher. Personally I think other sources would do
| well to consider this - frankly I would rather be a fan of an
| idea than a writer: the former seems reasonable the latter likely
| to vere into pointless worship. Plus it's much easier to switch
| to new ideas if they're superceded by better ones in due course.
| koheripbal wrote:
| It's probably THE most worthwhile subscription. I also pay for
| the WSJ, but the Economist blows it away.
|
| It's fact and evidence based and strongly avoids emotionally
| charged language and bias. That's not to say it's perfect. It's
| just closer to perfect than any other media source out there.
| mrweasel wrote:
| One thing I especially like about The Economist is that they
| consistantly explain who or what something is. It seems stupid to
| write: HSBC, a bank... I know it's a bank, but some might not,
| and in the many cases where I don't know a person, a company,
| technology or idea it's extremely useful.
| gxqoz wrote:
| NPR's Code Switch podcast had an episode a few years ago on
| this, which they call the explanatory comma:
| https://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/504482252/-hold-up-time-for-a...
|
| It gets at what you assume about your audience when you include
| vs. don't include these.
|
| I'm sometimes amused by what gets the explanatory comma in The
| New Yorker. I recall one issue where they included one for what
| an MLA citation was. But in the same issue assumed familiarity
| with someone like Jacques Derrida and their ideas. (This
| probably wasn't the exact example, but it was close to this.)
| swyx wrote:
| but, like, do two words "a bank" really do anything compared
| to what the reader could google conditional on not knowing
| what HSBC is? i feel like its just very performative
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| They do the same in their podcasts:
| https://www.economist.com/podcasts/
|
| Well worth a listen, even it does end up with me muttering
| curses at the 'radio' sometimes.
| atmosx wrote:
| What drove me off was the double standards applied by the
| economist, e.g.:
|
| "Yanis Varoufakis, a self-proclaimed erratic Marxist, [...]" vs
| "Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the President of the Eurogroup, [...]"
|
| What about "Varoufakis, a PhD economist who taught economics in
| three continents, [...]" vs "Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the President
| of the Eurogroup who accidentally claimed he obtained an MA
| from University College Cork, [...]"
|
| See what I did there? :-)
|
| Truth of the matter is that Varoufakis dwarfs the Eurogroup in
| terms of knowledge much like Keynes dwarfed everyone else at
| the Bretton Woods. Both of them, came from a position of
| weakness and for <reasons> failed to deliver.
|
| The Economist doesn't like Varoufakis, so Varoufakis must
| always be always shown in a derogatory light, while complete
| clowns like JD, and many others (see Krugman's assessment of
| Schauble's speech and analysis, laughable at best - comparing a
| state's economy to a household) as "high ranking, noteworthy
| authorities".
|
| Varoufakis is an example ofc. There are others (e.g. Beppe
| Grillo, Berlusconi, etc.).
|
| The other thing the Economist has (not) going on is that you
| can tell beforehand what you're going to read... I mean from
| MILES away, you already know the magazine's stance of
| everything that matters. China, Russia, Iran (bad)... US
| (good), UK (okay-ish), EU (almost-good).
|
| Consistently pro-war: Supported and pushed (Syria) for all
| kinds of invasions (Libya, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.).
|
| If you take away all that (and it's a lot), the rest is fine
| :-)
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| "The OECD, a rich country club"
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| More often _"...the OECD, a club of mostly rich
| countries... "_.
| klohto wrote:
| What a strawman. Yanis calls that himself, eq.
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-
| varoufaki...
| nindalf wrote:
| > Consistently pro-war
|
| Whenever the Economist speaks about the Iraq War, they add in
| parentheses "(which this newspaper supported)". They don't
| need to do that after so many years, but they do it anyway.
| That level of candour impressed me.
|
| This from 2018, 15 years after the war started - "Iraq, in
| other words, is doing well (see article). Some will argue
| that this justifies America's invasion to overthrow Saddam
| Hussein (which we supported). It does not. Too much blood was
| shed along the way in Iraq and elsewhere."
| (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/03/28/fifteen-
| years-a...)
|
| This level of self-reflection is rare.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I'm not sure they wouldn't just support the next one and
| then do a mea culpa after the fact again. Did they change
| the way they treat US intelligence info? Or address
| geopolitics differently? I'm not sure. I haven't read the
| Economist since 2018, but I genuinely don't see how they
| wouldn't end up cheering for the same exact type of
| intervention due to the exact same rhetoric.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I don't think the Varoufakis example is fair because, as the
| quote literally says, it's a title that Varoufakis has given
| himself, and he is often flippant and unorthodox himself.
| It's not derogatory.
|
| The Economist as a paper overall is very open-minded when it
| comes to different ideological points of view. I remember the
| analysis of Harry's and Meghan's move to the US through a
| Marxist lens[1], or their surprisingly positive take on
| China's developmentalist state[2]. For a magazine with a
| self-declared pro free-trade and market-based bias they tend
| to reflect a lot. I'm way to the left politically of the
| target-audience of the paper but I really don't think they
| deserve the reputation they get as some sort of unabashedly
| capitalist magazine.
|
| [1]https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/01/16/harry-meghan-
| an...
|
| [2]https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/08/13/xi-jinping-
| is-r...
| astrange wrote:
| I think the fact that they cover Africa and Latin America
| at all counts for a lot. Aside from effective altruism,
| almost everyone in the first world is happy to ignore them
| entirely, except for some leftists who think Elon Musk
| personally did a coup in Bolivia.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Yes. And with acronyms as well. They are always spelled out the
| first time, before the abbreviation is used.
| ghaff wrote:
| Not to criticize but that is, or should be, bog standard in
| any writing. (Assuming the acronym isn't widely used and the
| words that it embodies essentially a trivia contest answer).
| ajcp wrote:
| > Assuming the acronym isn't widely used
|
| I don't care how widely used the acronym for a noun is,
| first use should always be the full form.
|
| Only time I don't think it should be applied is in the case
| of a standard/protocol, or policy (such as gif or VAT).
| Then the first use should be the concept explained, not
| what it stands for.
|
| I do like their style-guide definition:
|
| acronym: A pronounceable word, formed from the initials of
| other words, like radar, nimby or NATO. It is not a set of
| initials, like the BBC or the IMF.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know. Spelling out the words that make up RADAR
| or SONAR would seem very pedantic to me. As would, in
| tech, something like SCSI when that was a common
| interface. In a general purpose magazine, I'd probably be
| inclined to given a context for NIMBY, NATO, and the IMF
| --but maybe not BBC (to a British audience).
| ajcp wrote:
| Upon thinking about it further I agree. So I think, using
| their style-guide definition I would go with: acronym:
| not spelled out, function explained. initials: spelled
| out, function explained.
| ghaff wrote:
| Agreed. And to the specific examples, it's arguably more
| important in an article to briefly explain what the
| function of NATO is and why it's important/relevant than
| to simply state it's the North Atlantic Treaty
| Organization which tells me zero if I don't know what
| NATO is.
| mejutoco wrote:
| We agree. To elaborate. I agree it should be. Unfortunately
| it is not. This is why I compliment the economist. They do
| it as I believe it should be.
|
| One example is the amount on comments here on hn about some
| acronyms thrown without explanation. There are, for
| instance, 1200 matches for 'What is IC' (Individual
| Contributor)
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&q
| u...
| rhines wrote:
| I think most people still see Hackernews as a website for
| people in the software industry, where IC is common
| knowledge. Plus comments aren't written to educate or
| sell a subscription, rather they're to ask a question,
| continue a discussion, or contest some point, so it's
| natural for the writing style to lean towards the
| informal and be less patronizing. And of course the
| search you show is a great example of why this isn't too
| big a problem - since HN is a discussion board, if
| someone is confused and they can't find the answer on
| Google, they can just ask for clarification in the
| comments, often getting a reply from the person who made
| the original comment that confused them. With a newspaper
| you can't really do that - even in comment sections
| authors rarely answer questions, and other readers don't
| tend to engage with the comments unless they have reasons
| of their own.
| mejutoco wrote:
| Very fair points. I see now It was not an equivalent
| example.
| euroderf wrote:
| Quite useful for Americans. Residents of the infamous North
| American superpower might be otherwise OTL, lunch being a
| sometimes-metaphorical meal.
| [deleted]
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Don't forget the cliches, puns, and references to music and film
| titles in the headlines:
|
| https://www.economist.com/johnson/2010/10/26/style-guide-ent...
| bovine3dom wrote:
| Their style guide is available on the Wayback Machine [1]. The
| first few pages of the introduction are well worth a read.
|
| [1]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20021031104254/http://www.econom...
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >Avoid, above all, the kind of jargon that tries either to
| dignify nonsense with seriousness (Working in an empowering
| environment, a topic discussed at a recent Economist
| conference)
|
| I can see why I need to reach for the Wayback Machine to read
| this great style guide. In the modern world, giving this
| example is far more trouble than it's worth. People do get
| touchy about challenges to their carefully promoted jargon, and
| now they are on the twitter.
| bovine3dom wrote:
| Frankly I think it's more likely that they took it down
| because they want to sell more books:
| https://shop.economist.com/products/the-economist-style-
| guid...
|
| The book has almost identical content from what I recall. I
| think they may have admitted defeat on the use of "he" for a
| hypothetical person of arbitrary gender.
| ghaff wrote:
| A lot of style guides are behind firewalls these days. I'm
| not sure all the reasons but it's probably some combination
| of concerns about revealing somewhat sensitive info and
| saying things in ways that some might find controversial.
| SllX wrote:
| More difficult to link to as well. Obviously not
| impossible if you can find it on the Internet Archive,
| but not everybody thinks to look there and sometimes you
| just have to get lucky.
| mr-ron wrote:
| These are the rules written by George Owell apparently, if you
| search, many links come up with the same wording.
|
| https://gosolomon.com/content-marketing-and-george-orwells-6...
| [deleted]
| bovine3dom wrote:
| Yeah - perhaps you missed it, but it says "Keep in mind
| George Orwell's six elementary rules ("Politics and the
| English Language", 1946)" just before it enumerates them.
|
| I think lots of good style guides quote them. My favourite is
| probably Kingsley Amis's "The King's English".
|
| It has the distinct "old man shouts at clouds" energy that
| one gets best from posthumous volumes.
| wwarner wrote:
| Related question for anyone passing by: Can you recommend
| similarly well written publications in Spanish?
| noja wrote:
| I've been told the long-form El Pais articles are well written.
| aj7 wrote:
| "I learned writing from The Economist. Back home, it wasn't easy
| to learn English. No one in my social circle was fluent in the
| language and I couldn't afford a private tutor. The best I could
| do was to create my own syllabus. The kiosk near my house had, to
| my surprise, the newspaper1. I'd save my allowance to buy
| whatever issue was on the stand. I'd divide each issue into two
| units: New Vocabulary and Writing Tools. I'd then memorize the
| novel words and apply the newly-discovered sentence structures to
| my essays. I kept doing this for three years."
|
| "Learned writing from The Economist. Wasn't easy to learn English
| at home. No one I knew was fluent and I couldn't afford a private
| tutor. Best I could do was to create my own syllabus. The kiosk
| near my house had the Economist. I'd save my allowance to buy
| whatever issue was on the stand. Divided each issue into 2 units:
| Vocabulary and Writing Tools. I'd memorize the novel words and
| apply the newly-discovered sentence structures. Kept doing this
| for three years."
|
| ["Good university-level" writing is verbose, filled with
| flourishes and redundant verbosities, and things that can be
| accurately context-guessed.]
| astrange wrote:
| > ["Good university-level" writing is verbose, filled with
| flourishes and redundant verbosities, and things that can be
| accurately context-guessed.]
|
| Also how you get ahead in Nigeria.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-38827888
| jeegsy wrote:
| This effect originates from our native languages. Or perhaps
| institutional memory of how the British wrote in the colonial
| era. Source: Grew up in Nigeria
| maximp wrote:
| I don't follow - what is the second paragraph meant to
| demonstrate?
| gwern wrote:
| I think it demonstrates that if you follow style advice to
| the point of folly, you can successfully embarrass yourself
| by sounding like third-rate Hemingway _and_ make your writing
| hard to read.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I _really_ respect this guy 's effort to learn to write well in
| English. It's one thing to get by in a foreign language, or to be
| conversant enough to work in tech, but he's thought about writing
| in this language in a way that I, as a native speaker, never
| have. My thoughts on writing are basically just (1) be brief (2)
| use easy words.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| I agree! Kudos to this gentleman for his hard work and love of
| the language.
| thecopy wrote:
| I am looking for another magazine/newspaper but which covers more
| culture and have more cultural opinion.
|
| The New Yorker is one alternative but i find their pieces very
| long-winded and high-brow.
|
| Any suggestions?
| [deleted]
| jackconsidine wrote:
| I'd add one thing to this post: The Economist reliably lists
| counterpoints to its articles. It has a nuanced feel, rare for a
| news source. The weekly cycle also helps as sensationalized
| nonsense doesn't make the cut.
|
| A trick someone told me was to read the sections in reverse
| (Obit, Books / Arts, Science etc); the writing quality is best
| towards the end!
|
| PS this post reads a lot like the Johnson column on language,
| writing etc.
| BitLit wrote:
| Years ago I was making a pitch to USV... the startup I was
| pitching was publishing related, and out of the blue one of the
| partners (Brad) asked me what order I read my Economist in? I
| paused to think and answered that I read front to back and
| skipped sections if they didn't look interesting. Then I asked
| him what order he read it in. He said back to front. The
| conversation moved on without the chance for me to ask why.
| Maybe the reason was writing quality.
| pram wrote:
| The front part (the 'leaders') are opinion pieces. The
| international sections are usually more straight reporting on
| events.
| anthuswilliams wrote:
| The leaders are the only part of the magazine I skip these
| days.
| onebike wrote:
| Yeah, the obituaries are so well written. The recent one they
| wrote about Chick Corea made a great point about his influence
| while being extremely personal and delicate. Really made me
| want to explore more of his music.
| cranekam wrote:
| I _think_ the obits are all written by one person, Ann Wroe.
| I heard a really good interview with her a few years ago but
| I can 't find it now. https://medium.economist.com/the-art-
| of-writing-an-obituary-... is reasonably interesting.
| brox wrote:
| She was interviewed on February 4th 2021 as part of their
| digital events series ("An audience with Ann Wroe,
| obituaries editor"). Worth a listen: https://economist-
| subsevents.zoom.us/rec/play/5b6CntzRCPHSJz...
| halhod wrote:
| almost all are written by Ann, who is brilliant. the odd
| one is written by a subject matter expert, or by someone
| for whom the subject was a source
|
| this one is a particularly good example, that HN may enjoy
| https://www.economist.com/obituary/2019/02/21/obituary-
| the-m...
| astrange wrote:
| Dennis Ritchie got 1.5 articles and John McCarthy 0.5,
| although it's a bit painful to read the Economist house
| style discussing programming languages.
|
| https://www.economist.com/babbage/2011/10/20/printfgoodby
| e-d...
|
| https://www.economist.com/obituary/2011/11/05/dennis-
| ritchie...
| tclancy wrote:
| She is the one can't-miss part of the magazine.
| osipov wrote:
| Good luck finding a counterpoint in Economist to a claim that
| Putin is a killer.
| paulpauper wrote:
| >He scuppered Barack Obama's environmental agenda and voted to
| confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
|
| How is this better than simply using the word "thwarted"?
| nindalf wrote:
| The thwarter can be an opponent or an ally but more likely an
| opponent. The scupperer is the opposite - more likely to be on
| the same boat as the person who's boat is being scuppered.
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