[netcan]

Sounds like an interesting guy.

I think he’s slightly underestimating or misunderstanding the “VC backed frivolousness” though. No one knew that a search engine could generate 20-30bn p/a in advertising revenue until it did. Even Facebook, taking their advertising “stock” into a more mature existing market didn’t know what it was worth in advance. No one knew that TV advertising would be worth what it is/was until the American’s ‘National Brands’ complex matured. It was all nearly impossible to estimate beforehand.

So… I think VC’s are making some sort of a bet that news = attention = advertising revenue. It’s vague, but that’s to be expected. It’s also not an arbitrary connection being made between media and software. The economic difference between Gangnam Style and Charlie Bit Me is that Psy has something to sell that is valuable once recognizable enough. The exchange rate for popularity to money is fairly arbitrary and difficult to determine in advance.

In any case, I think they as a business are doing the right thing. We need companies doing their job for the most part. 5% chance at a 20X return can’t be the way everyone does business.

OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is investigative journalism is it not? Otherwise, it’s just writers clarifying and putting their own perspective on existing work. It’s investigative in the sense that they talk to experts, I suppose. But, I still get the feeling they’re in the section of the complex which is most easy to solve.

Right now you can read the economist and get up to speed on Yemen, The Iran Deal, British Elections, and various smaller topics in the same economist style. They are not in the business of exploring and upsetting and revealing. I’m not worried that this kind of reporting is something we’ll lack for.

Anyway, one of the things that did impress me is a lack of a common Old News complaint that people should pay for journalism, that it should be funded somehow and that things are not allowed to change in ways that jeopardise the way they do things. I spoke to a journalist recently that was all complaints about how no one wants to pay for news anymore.

[ghaff]

>OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do. I mean, the difficult part is investigative journalism is it not?

It's a reasonable point that The Economist isn't really in the business of breaking news. I had never really thought about it but you're right. I'm sure they wouldn't be opposed to doing so but it's not their focus. (Not that deep investigative stories form a large part of any magazine's or newspaper's focus.)

However, the breadth of what The Economist covers and its very solid writing is--in the aggregate--pretty hard to emulate. It's hard in the sense that you need to pay for a lot of experienced journalists and editors who write well. Individual stories and columns aren't hard but the whole weekly package is. You could probably say the same thing about The Wall Street Journal for that matter.

[netcan]

That's just it, that kind of writing is somewhat peripheral to the core of journalism, at least the definition of journalism which is an institution essential to democracy. It's more stylistically similar to an academic writing a public consumption book chronicling events of the last year than it is to reports from a journalist currently embedded with the propaganda arm of ISIS in Syria.

One can be done from your office at the university, perhaps making extensive use of skype and good contacts.

I have no problem with the economist, I read it. I just don't expect that this kind of writing will be in danger, regardless of the business environment.

[ghaff]

I agree up to a point. There is a lot of value in curating expertise and bringing it together in one quality place.

That said, for kicks I looked through The Economist's media directory and it is indeed pretty London-centric. While I have no doubt that its correspondents are quite knowledgable about their beats (and I assume have plenty of good contacts), it's not like The Economist has a lot of big foreign bureaus.

[mike_hearn]

They did try it once. They had some original investigative journalism of some horrendously convoluted oil deals, or something. I forget the details. It was rather boring.

[cschmidt]

> Sounds like an interesting guy.

I think his twitter feed @tomstandage is very interesting. He's kind of the cool uncle who knows about lots of fun things going on. He's written a number of books like "History of the Worlds in 6 glasses", which I enjoyed.

http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Standage/e/B001H6N3PK/

He plays the drums, and he is (or at least was the last time I checked) in charge of the "back half" of the Economist. (The part after the news.)

[gshubert17]

He's an engaging writer. I enjoyed several of his books: The Victorian Internet[0], The Turk[1], and The Neptune File [2].

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteen...

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Turk-Eighteenth-Century-Chess-Play...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Neptune-File-Astronomical-Pioneers...

[DanBC]

> OTOH, I’m not sure that journalistically The Economist really does do some difficult task that no one else can do

They get people to pay for it, which is where others seem to fail.

[netcan]

People also pay for books about current affairs. I was not suggesting that it is not legitimate, just sort of wondering about where they are in the bigger picture of journalism as a business, as a part of democracy..