[davidw]

The Economist is worth the subscription. You know how you often read about something you know in the media and think ... "if they are getting this wrong, what else are they getting wrong?". I've noticed it happens quite a bit less with The Economist, and they write about a fairly broad range of subjects.

[eigenvector]

Quite the contrary, in writing concisely about a broad range of complex topics the Economist often passes off opinion or conjecture as fact and analysis. Compare their writing on the domestic politics of any country besides the US and UK to that country's own media and you will find it disappointingly shallow.

[igravious]

According to http://store.economist.com/FAQ.aspx > The Economist is published weekly, 51 times a year, with the Christmas double issue remaining on sale for two weeks. The issue is dated Saturday and goes on sale each Friday.

I know from reading it semi-regularly that it comments on significant economic/political developments from around the globe. It does this by breaking the world in regions (Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas) and then choosing to the stories from that region. Elections, power struggles, wars, economic fortunes, social/political movements, biographical sketches. The Economist also has special features on a weekly basis that cover global topics in depth, could be Bitcoin one week, renewable energy the next, the €zone crisis another week, also scientific topics.

By necessity (because it is published weekly and because its scope is global) the regular news stories are not in depth but I wouldn't therefore call them shallow. They are condensed is the word I'd use. Maybe they lose a bit of nuance but that's understandable.

When they do scientific and technical articles I find that their fact-checking and research seems to frequently attain a very high quality. People have commented on this feature of The Economist here on HN. Only The New Yorker seems to be more fastidious. What you call opinion or conjecture is actually their editorial stance§. The Economist is unashamedly biased. They believe in the free markets and I would say have a very liberal (in the British/European sense of the word liberal) philosophical outlook. They often defend their values. To have values is to be biased. What's worse I think are publications that report the news and pretend they're unbiased, when you can tell they're not either by sins of omission or misreporting whether deliberate or not and slanted recounting.

§ I personally don't share their worldview, I am more socialist than they but I recognise that disagreement on values isn't the same as that "well, that's just, like, your _opinion_ man"

[ascorbic]

Whereas most other US/UK media don't cover the domestic politics of other countries at all. It not that surprising that it's not comparable local media. When they have such a broad coverage in a single weekly magazine there's no way they can match the coverage of media in that country, and this applies to the US and UK too. However this doesn't mean that their analysis is weak or that their perspective isn't useful. It's just that there's no way it can be in the depth of media that cover it every day. As for passing off opinion as fact, that's not passing-off, it's just the house style which is opinionated in the news stories as well as leaders. This isn't something they try to hide. The Economist is useful if you want to have an opinionated round up of the world's events, as well as regular long form special reports on topics in more depth. In particular, their editorial position is one that is uncommon in many countries.

[davidw]

When I lived in Italy, my (Italian) wife and I actually almost always enjoyed their reporting on Italy, as it often got to the heart of the matter in a much more succinct manner than the local papers.