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Comment by chucksmash | Hacker News Reader

Why would you listen to something you seem to despise as middlebrow?

I subscribed to and tried to keep up with The Weekly Standard for a year to try to see if there was some "secret sauce" I was missing because of my personal political leanings. It was a maddening experience. As it turns out, spending time hanging out in the other side's echo chamber doesn't make you more well-informed or empathetic, just angrier. Do you listen to NPR for similar reasons?

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Oh and I guess by way of offering an alternative for getting out of the echo chamber... check out The Economist. They certainly have their institutional preferences too (e.g. U.K. Conservatives vs Labour, central bank monetary policy) but even when dealing with their pet subjects I find them more levelheaded than most mainstream U.S. outlets.

I picked one up in a coffee shop. Instantly noticed it has zero bylines. Not on any article; not even an editors' list in the front. Is that a Brit thing? Just publish stuff, don't say who said it, and expect folks to believe it?

Since I have a policy of never reading anything without attribution, I could read only the letters to the editor (ok they had bylines on those) so I only know about the article quality indirectly.

It's an Economist thing.

All of their letters to the editor used to be addressed simply to "SIR" as well, a practice they've only done away with just this year. Aside from a couple of pseudonymous regular features in each issue (Bagehot, Schumpeter) there are no bylines.

In 2013 they talked a bit about why they choose to operate this way:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec...

That's an Economist thing. They feel that "what is written is more important than who writes it"[0].

[0]: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/09/ec...

How can they pretend to write with authority on a subject? They don't even publish their editorial board. Its little better than a random guy on the internet quoting made-up facts without SOME idea where they came from. And don't say "The Economist" because they don't say who that is!

Maybe the editorial staff assumes the responsibility for all the correctness issues? That would actually makes sense, since they have the final say in what gets published and should do some additional verification. Just a theory. I don't read The Economist very often and never offline.

Except I don't know who that is - they don't publish them either.

"don't say "The Economist" because they don't say who that is!"

It is The Economist. That's the whole point. There is a (good) reputation attached to it. If they fail to live up to their own standards, then that reputation will crumble and people will stop reading and quoting it. It's a brand.

We used to have brands for products, like RCA, Westinghouse, Philips, etc. But these have become just nametags that are bought and sold, and no longer mean much, or anything. But there are a few brands left that still mean something.

I listen to them because they seem to be the least bad option, but far from good. So bad, but not as bad as others. On the other hand they like to think themselves as source of truth, to some extent. In other words that their politics are good politics.

Another thing about npr is that they handicap issues. So, there might be a small issue but it affects one of their agenda, it gets handicapped and given more exposure than something like that would warrant, under even treatment.

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