It's like the video mashups that gawker published the other day. Sample others' work and then slap it together in a semi meaningful way. Who needs original scholarship?

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I don't remember Sullivan's critique (and the author was Andrew Sullivan) in that much detail -- I just recall his conclusion that the percentage of nonoriginal reportage was too great to justify the Economist's lofty reputation.

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[www.medialifemagazine.com]

One of Sullivan's critiques was that the Economist has no bureaus. It had something like one bureau for all of Africa.

I remember it being a pretty convincing critique, and I do think it sells well in the US because people read it in a British accent so it sounds more authoritative.

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Which is strange, eh, because now it's owned by a Canadian?

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And their habit of having their writing turn brit-humorous at the least expected moments is just endearing. It's a conceit, but one that I happen to like.

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1993 - "The Americanization of the Economist"

Free trade -- The Economist's quasi-religious belief in the efficiency of markets -- has been a crusade of the magazine since its rounding in 1843. Hostility to tariffs and an unwavering faith in the benevolent consequences of deregulating industry and privatizing government enterprises are also articles of faith. Confronted with the unpleasant consequences of its editorial obsession -- for the past decade, the Thatcher government did more or less what The Economist told it to, sending Britain into the worst recession since the 1930s -- the magazine has not altered its prescription. Nor has the recent collapse of British efforts to maintain a strong pound -- a favorite Economist hobbyhorse since the 1920s -- prompted the editors to reconsider, even though the pound's plunge threatened a cause even dearer to the magazine: the creation of a single European currency.

"The Economist won't admit that the modern world has nothing to do with the world of [nineteenth-century free-trade advocate] David Ricardo," says Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Observer. "World trade today is dominated by several hundred multinationals," Henwood adds, pointing to The Economist's view that deregulation of U.S. airlines has been a big success as an indication of the magazine's reluctance to revise its views even in the face of considerable evidence. Henwood also faults The Economist for its coziness with the World Bank -- noting that magazine starlets wrote and edited the most recent World Development Report -- and for its longstanding fealty to The Bank of England. In February, Economist editor Rupert Pennant-Rea resigned to become deputy governor at the Bank, the number-two job at Britain's equivalent of the Federal Reserve.@skahammer:

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Though a lot of the criticism of the Economist seems to overlook people like me, who read it not for its political prescriptions but just for its breadth of coverage. If there were a leftier alternative with similar coverage, I'd probably prefer it -- but I'm not aware of one that prints on paper. (American editors seem convinced that a weekly survey of non-US news is "beyond the pale.") So people like me just try to see through the received political views and focus on the reporting, such as it is.

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