Category Archives: The Economist

Non-profit newspapers

Orville Schell

Orville Schell

Orville Schell, formerly the dean of the graduate school of journalism at Berkeley (where I used to teach) and one of my mentors (of which more another time), has for years been saying that the future, if there is one, of the news business is as a non-profit public service.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been sensing that this is becoming conventional wisdom. Today, David Swenson, a legendary fund manager of Yale’s endowment, makes exactly this case in the New York Times. Given his credibility in matters of analysis–especially when the subject is endowments–this might lead to actual and big change soon.

Note that The Economist, though officially called a “newspaper”, is in a very different position than the kind that you used to wrap your fish in. Still, after years of chaos in the wider news industry, the thinking is at last getting clearer…

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Welcome to WordPress, Tom

Tom Standage

Tom Standage

Tom Standage, a friend and colleague at The Economist, has finally migrated to WordPress and started regular blogging. Check in on him regularly. His first five books are a great read and I can’t wait for his sixth, which is on food, but with a historical angle not unlike the one I’m using in my book.

Tom edits the Business Section AND the Tech Quarterly, so you’ll also enjoy his musings on topics such as whether Apple will come out with an eBook Reader this year that might kill Amazon’s Kindle. As it happens, I am testing a Kindle right now. I’ll tell you anon how I think it will affect the future of reading….

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Editing as “desophistication”

Every writer has stories about editors–the great ones and the other ones. But I wanted to share what Johnny Grimmond, our doyen of style at The Economist and author of our Style Guide, has to say on the matter. I have already quoted Johnny on the vital issue of like versus as (never to be confused!). Here now is what he says about editing (British spelling, of course):

It is quite easy to rewrite an article without realising that one has done much to it at all: the cursor leaves no trace of crossing-out, handwritten insertions, rearranged sentences or reordered paragraphs. The temptation is to continue to make changes until something emerges that the editor himself might have written. …

The moral for editors is that they should respect good writing. … A writer’s style, after all, should reflect his mind and personality. … Editors should exercise suitable self-restraint. … Bear in mind this comment from John Gross:

Most writers I know have tales to tell of being mangled by editors and mauled by fact-checkers, and naturally it is the flagrant instances they choose to single out–absurdities, outright distortions of meaning, glaring errors. But most of the damage done is a good deal less spectacular. It consists of small changes (usually too boring to describe to anyone else) that flatten a writer’s style, slow down his argument, neutralise his irony; that ruin the rhythm of a sentence or the balance of paragraph; that deaden the tone that makes the music. I sometimes think of the process as one of “desophistication”.

Brancusi, Einstein, simplicity and beauty

If non-conformity and “impudence” are the first ingredients in the astonishing creativity of a man such as Einstein, as I said here, are there yet other ingredients? Of course. And the most important, in my opinion, is an appreciation of simplicity.

More than most people I know, I yearn for simplicity in my life–on my desk, in my file folders, in my home decoration, in my writing, my sentences and of course my thoughts. Quite probably, that is because there is far too much complexity in all of these.

When I approach a new topic, as I did a years ago when I, who was a technophobe, took over the tech beat at The Economist, I first run it through my complexity/simplicity filter. At that time I came up with this.

If I had to choose a favorite sculptor, it might be Brancusi, who grasped simplicity as well as anybody. It is at heart an uncluttering. In Brancusi’s case, he strips a thing of all unnecessary detail in order to reveal its underlying form.

Simplicity is thus also a form of honesty. Once the underlying form of a thing is revealed, you know whether it has beauty or, in the case of writing, also substance. Some of you may recall my idiosyncratic way of reading, by copying and pasting a long document into my word processor, then deleting all extraneous detail as I go along. In effect, I force simplicity onto, say, a research paper. Often, this is how I realize that the boffin in question was a windbag and had nothing to say, hiding behind verbose complexity. Other times, I realize I have hit a treasure trove.

Back to Einstein. Isaac Newton in his Principia had already said that

Nature is pleased with simplicity.

Einstein extended his hunch, saying that

Nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas.

and

I have been guided not be the pressure from behind of experimental facts, but by the attraction in front from mathematical simplicity.

What goes for sculptors, inventors, physicists and other forms of homo sapiens goes especially for writers.

Why some comments are good and others suck

The comments on The Hannibal Blog tend to be excellent–witty, funny, sophisticated–which is a great thrill to me because it suggests that my blog draws interesting (and I dare say erudite) readers.

By contrast, the comments on the website of my employer, The Economist, tend overwhelmingly to be banal, moronic and useless. There are gems in there, but on they whole the comments are so bad that, internally, we recently spent a long, long time discussing what to do about that.

So I was delighted when I came across a very well-thought-out post on the blog of Nicolas Kayser-Bril, a media economist. Given the publication I write for, it should have occurred to me to apply the logic of economics to the problem. Oh well, Nicolas beat me to it.

The problem is captured, as Nicolas shows, in this chart:

As Nicolas explains,

the more commenters you have, the more likely it is that one of them is a troll. … That’s why I drew the blue curve of the marginal value of a single comment. It decreases as an inverse function of the number of commenters, itself a function of the size of the audience.

Hence the red line: as the audience grows in size, the total value of comments increases more slowly.

Now for moderation. I’m assuming that the cost of moderating a single comment remains constant, so that the total cost of moderation increases linearly. Just look at the curve. At some point, it costs more to moderate comments that to get rid of them…

My point is simply that a larger audience automatically leads to a conversation of lesser value, relative to the number of participants.

The answer to the vexing issue of why The Hannibal Blog has great comments while The Economist has awful comments thus appears shockingly simple: The former has a small audience, the latter a large audience.

I will let this percolate through my morning brain. There may be concrete, real-world implications in this….


What’s in a word: “Liberal”

Adam Smith

As you may have noticed by now, I am a lover of words–to the point of pedantry–and it gives me indigestion to hear people abuse my little darlings. Americans are especially prone. For example, they are scandalously liberal with the word … liberal.

Traveling around America, we at The Economist get at least two questions in any gathering. 1) Why don’t we have bylines? 2) Are we liberal or conservative?

Folks, the way you (the Americans) ask that second question, it does not make any sense! You, unique among nations, did something quite uncivilized to this word, liberal. You unilaterally and wantonly changed its meaning, without telling the other 6.3 billion of us. You cannot do that! As The Economist has demanded before, it’s our word and “we want it back.”

Here is what liberal means: It comes from the Latin liber, free, and refers both to a philosophy and worldview that treasures individual freedom (as in Liberalism) and to the habits and learning befitting a free individual (as in Liberal Arts). That’s all.

The origins of liberalism go back to classical Greece (the “left leg” in this analogy of the Western Tradition as a “body”). It thrived during the Enlightenment, especially its Scottish flavor; found a permanent fan group when The Economist was founded; came under undignified attack in the past century; was defended valorously by people like my great-uncle Ludwig Erhard; became a whipping post in France (especially in the phrase “neoliberal”) for people who like to roll tractors through McDonald’s outlets; and now lives this bizarre American double life among barely literate TV-show hosts.

Liberal means: Tolerant, even enthusiastic, about the eccentricities of individuals and the diversity of lifestyles, as long as nobody is harmed. Hence, a modern Liberal is likely to support the right of gays to marry, as The Economist has done far longer than any other major publication that I’m aware of.

It also means being tolerant, even enthusiastic, about the willingness of individuals to take risks for gain, without any sour-grapes Collectivist outbreak of envy after the fact.

It means skepticism about huge efforts to change human nature; about naive faith in governments or companies always being “good”; about any attempt to subordinate the individual to society.

But Liberalism does not mean (as anti-Thatcherites in Britain once tried to imply) denial that there is such a thing as society.

And it does not mean (duh, really!) salivating over “big government”. Whatever that is called, it is not Liberalism.

Finally, is it the same as what Americans call Libertarianism? In theory, it comes close. In practice, not. American Libertarianism tends to attract a lot of loonies.

Liberals are not loonies. They don’t foam at the mouth. If you need an image, it is of a dour Scot like Adam Smith, pictured above. Slightly dull, but excited about the fun that others get up to. Sort of like The Economist.

Britishness, masculinity and humor

I’m still digesting the cornucopia of impressions and ideas that came out of our (The Economist‘s) powwow last week. One observation, not new but reinforced: Those Brits are unbelievably good at public speaking, at humorous and witty banter that nonetheless has a point–and indeed pointedness–and force.

There were of course all those presentations. But the performances that stood out were the after-dinner speeches by two of our “most British” writers, both cavalier Oxford types. They were a) hilarious and b) profound. The two can go together.

There they were, in front of all of us, lightly and sprightly bantering away, to smirks at first, then smiles, then chuckles and eventually full-throttle guffawing. And yet the topics were dead-serious. They were debating which of the many pressing world issues we should take on as our next “cause”.

(We were founded 160 years ago to campaign for free trade, and since then we have always pushed for one liberal and progressive cause or another–that’s “liberal” in the true, original sense of the word. Sometimes we actually win. Then we have to find a new cause.)

The Commons, moments before hilarity

The Commons, moments before hilarity

Perspective Number 1: Non-British

After the dinner, a German colleague and friend of mine came up to me, and we reflected how we continentals just don’t grow up in environments that instill this public-speaking culture. That is why we are so in awe of the Brits. We love watching the debates in the House of Commons. Or, for that matter, the debating that goes on in each and every one of our famous “Monday morning meetings” at The Economist. Really, it is a pleasure just to sit back and listen to the cadences and ironies and codas.

Perspective Number 2: Female

So impressed was I that I kept talking about this at lunch the next day, as I was sitting between two female colleagues. One of them, a very senior editor, immediately said: “But that’s just the men!”

I looked genuinely puzzled. Not because my years in the Inquisition politically-correct America have taught me to shut up whenever any topic remotely related to sex (or “gender”, as Americans say) comes up. But because I genuinely had no idea what she meant.

But the other female colleague knew exactly what she meant. “Absolutely,” she said. The British boys of a certain social class learn public-speaking and ironic and witty mano a mano verbal fighting from the day they enter Eton and Harrow or whatever “public” school they attend. The girls don’t so much.

“No, it’s more than that,” said the other female editor. “Men are just much funnier.” This is when I knew that this conversation, like all the others during that gathering, would become very interesting. But, Americanized as I am, I just listened. (Larry Summers, anyone?)

Among the theories advanced: In the Darwinian struggle to reproduce, humor may have become a male strategy to display “fitness” to the opposite sex. Interesting.

Then: Somebody proposed that, especially in humor-challenged cultures such as America, the funniest people tend in fact to be lesbian women. We pursued that for a while.

And so it went. Never a dull moment, when you’re hanging around us writers of The Economist…. 😉


Answering questions about The Economist

Margaret Lee, a journalism student at the University of Maryland, has to write an essay for her class on “the future of newsweeklies,” and emailed me some interview questions. I thought that I might as well share her questions and my answers here.

1. How long have you been working for The Economist? What do you like about working for this magazine?

I’ve been working for The Economist for eleven years. What I love most is the people. The Editorial team of about 70-ish writers is like a large, chaotic family, as I was reminded again this week when we gathered here. I like the open-minded and inquiring culture, the pervasive irony, the informality and quirkiness….

2. The Economist has increased circulation and added advertisers when the opposite has been happening to Time and Newsweek. To what do you attribute to The Economist’s success in the era of 24-hr news on the web? Do all newsweeklies need to go niche to be successful?

We are a very unusual, perhaps strange, magazine and culture. And we are unapologetic and un-selfconscious about this eccentricity. Our best-known idiosyncrasy is that we have no bylines, but there are many others. We often and in many ways defy trends. For instance, we “spend little time worrying about what readers might want,” as Clive Crook, our former deputy editor once put it. Instead, we write what we think should be written. With that attitude, I think, comes a certain authenticity that readers recognize and appreciate.

Are we “niche”? I don’t know. Not as niche as many blogs or special journals that go deep without being broad. But a lot more niche than some mainstream publications, which are broad without being deep. My feeling is that authenticity is a bigger factor in success than niche-ness, but the two often go together.

3. US News also recently went digital. What do you think of this transition? Will it enable the magazine to survive?

I couldn’t possibly say. Not because I’m being diplomatic and coy, but because I have no idea. It depends on what they do next.

4. What role does The Economist’s website play? Is this role similar or different to the role of Time or Newsweek’s websites?

Well, this is the main topic that we just discussed this week at a powwow in the English countryside. Thanks to the success of our print edition we are in the unusual and strategically valuable position of having time to think it through and to let others make mistakes. Nobody in the industry today has figured out a demonstrably lucid answer to your question. But I think it is obvious that over the coming years both the web site and the print edition will change to find different but complementary roles.

There are some obvious differences: Reading the paper edition is a “lean-back experience”, whereas being online is a “lean-forward experience”. Paper can not make sounds or play video, but the web site (and iTunes, where we are big) can. Paper gives you one issue at a time, whereas the web site can, in theory, give you all 160 years’ worth of articles, which can be searchable, sharable and linkable.

These are statements of fact. That said, there are some things in the works that will be of interest to you in the coming year, but I can’t say more at this point. Sorry to remain somewhat vague.

5. Time and Newsweek have been revamping their print editions and website. What changes have you noticed and do you think they were the right move?

In this case, I could comment but prefer not to. They have very smart people, and we will pay attention to what they do. But–and this is important–I don’t want you to go away with the impression that Time and Newsweek are our main rivals. They are not.

Who is? This is a subtle question. We are in 208 countries. In each country we compete with a) magazines and newspapers, b) radio and television to some extent, and c) the web. In America, readers in our segment are more likely to read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, The Atlantic and Wired than Time and Newsweek. Even Forbes and Fortune and Business Week are not direct comparisons (they are business magazines, whereas we, despite some impressions to the contrary, cover everything).

Ultimately, we all compete against time. Not the one with the capital T but the other one. Our readers in particular tend to have too little of it (ie, time). What might a demanding person choose to do on, say, a weekend? Family. Exercise. Culture. Books. Somewhere we want to fit into this. And that should be rewarding for our readers. Again, you would be surprised how little we worry about what other magazines might be up to.

6. What are the The Economist’s current goals for the near future and how is the magazine working to achieve them?

1) To weather the current economic crisis, which is a recession and might become a depression, and which is likely to hit advertising even harder than other industries. We can be disciplined about costs, but ultimately we can do little more than to keep writing good articles.

2) To figure out the ultimate and precise answer to your question about our web stragegy. This, in contrast to the previous point, is within our power. But I can’t say more.

7. Will there always be a place for print newsweeklies? What do you hope to see?

Yes. The lesson from media history, going back to Gutenberg, is that no “old” medium ever disappears because a newer medium arrives. Instead, the old media change context. (Individual media companies may disappear, of course, but not the medium as such.)

One example: The context of radio used to be a) in the living room and b) during prime time, with the family gathered around a big box. Think of FDR’s fireside chats. Then television came along, a strange new thing that was “half Latin and half Greek” and would surely kill radio off. Well, it didn’t. Instead, radio entered a new golden age, by moving into a) the car during b) the commute hours.

The challenge is therefore not about gracefully preparing for death but about thinking clearly about how the context of magazines is changing and then adjusting.


Powwow by the Thames

Danesfield House

Well, I’m in an airport once again, on the way back from this place above. This is where I have been holed up for two days with an astonishing group of people: many of my colleagues at The Economist. The setting quite reminded me of the movie Mansfield Park. It is a castle-ish place in the foggy English hills by a bend of the Thames. But who cares about that?

What I cared about was the incredible level of intellect, wit, irony and cosmopolitan curiosity of the people inside. We gathered in order to think. Debate. Laugh. Argue. About the future of the world, the media, the economy and our place in it. The main focus was our web strategy, but it went beyond it.

I’m not at liberty to say much more about it for the time being. But I can say that this was a highlight. There is no other group of people like this. I consider myself lucky.


The web’s paparazzi culture

They did another podcast with me, this time about my piece in The World in 2009, which is The Economist‘s annual thought-leader issue.

We did this on Skype. She was in London, I was in California. My voice sounds strangely metallic and a bit choppy.

The topic, though, has nothing to do with my book. Instead, we’re talking about whether you can be online nowadays and still preserve your privacy.
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