The premise being old and experienced authors can't make mistakes.
But behind that facade is a kid not long out of Eton who probably is working at his very first job.
And there's nothing wrong with that. But the magazine is not upfront about it. In fact it intentionally hides it from its readers.
It's the same game that consulting firms and I-banks play, where they bring in a partner to shake some hands and then all the real work is done behind the scenes by a 25 year old recent graduate with an elite education but no experience, working 80 hours a week and sleeping under his desk.
I think it's the content of a text, not its label, that displays understanding and experience. Arguing only experts should be writing for X because it puts on an air of expertise is getting causality backwards: a publication gets its reputation from its work.
Reputation and credentials are important because reading something like this is an act of trust. It matters whether the source is competent and trustworthy. However, I don't think it's a problem for the trust to apply at a publication level rather than an individual author level. Editors are a thing.
If you already know whether or not the Economist is correct about something, what value are you getting from reading it?
The economist writes on topics on which I am an expert. It writes on many topics on which I am not. The topics on which I have expertise I find to generally be (a) reasonably well-written, and (b) incorrect within the recognizable error-margins of "well researched, clearly spoke to a lot of people that knew their shit, didn't see much in the way of terrible mis-comprehensions."
That's better than the vast majority of published material on the topics on which I have expertise. I take that as a proxy indicator of the quality of information in the remainder of the magazine. It's not particularly known as being expert in My Topic, so if they handle that well, the rest is reasonably unlikely to be trash.
It can, of course, be trash, and this doesn't guarantee any particular piece of writing isn't, but on the whole, I think my conclusion is reasonable.
Exactly my experience on topics I know - the author probably spoke to several experts, has enough grasp of it that he can meaningfully excerpt and summarise their opinion, doesn't make silly mistakes, and most likely has the stated facts absolutely right.
If that were true, it'd be one more reason not to try to give credence to unfalsifiable publications by linking them to experts of various fields, or even editors-who-once-took-a-course-on-T.
But I think it's not true at all. The thought process on most publications like Economist is one most people can follow for its validity, precisely because it's not state-of-the-art mathematics (or even economics). Even though the domain experts can immediately judge its correctness, I think it's important for anyone to be able to at least identify when they're reading something they can't verify as correct, and not take publication X's "word" for it.
> Editors are a thing.
Editors are there to make sure the news piece conforms to certain standards, but that's not the standards of the readers.
> If you already know whether or not the Economist is correct about something, what value are you getting from reading it?
That was nowhere near my point, and I don't see why you base your comment around it. My point is I am (or want to be) able to read a piece and judge it on its own, rather than who wrote it.
I generally agree with your analysis of the Economist's staff, but I wouldn't say they intentionally hide the fact that their writers have little expertise to draw on. It's like an inside joke that anyone who cares to research their editorial practices knows. I still enjoy reading the magazine from time to time, knowing full well that what I am reading about Southeast Asian demographics might have been "researched" by talking to a friend whose girlfriend just returned from a holiday in Cambodia, and just chuckle when I read an impressively argued assertion that I know is superficially true but doesn't mean what the author thinks it does.
If you wanted to put out a news magazine as thick as the Economist and actually have everything in it properly researched and written by knowledgeable experts, it would probably either cost $50/issue or, more likely, go bankrupt. So instead we have a magazine that does its utmost to aspire to that ideal, but is actually written by 23-year-olds sleeping under their desks - as you say - who do write some rather good stuff, but also a lot of total baloney. It's half educational and half entertainment - and the fun is figuring out which half is which.
That, and the model of lots of eager youngsters overseen by a thinning pyramid of progressively more experienced people, as in consulting or investment banking, seems to crank out some pretty good results.