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Rappers on *The Economist* magazine
"The style in which they write is simple and concise, how do they get their sentences so precise?" the rappers wonder.
And the chorus is a gem, too: "He reads the Economist so he can get the gist, its solid competence gives him confidence that his intelligence is correct."
The rappers also weigh in on accusations that the Economist pushes a particular line: "Yes, they have a bias; it's pro-democratic. And pro-free trade; they are very emphatic."
The source is Chris Blattman.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 6, 2008 at 10:49 AM in Music | Permalink
Comments
That last line should probably be:
"Yes, they have bias ; so do I; that they agree is praise in the highest"
(now you know why I'm not a rapper)
Posted by: rcriii at May 6, 2008 11:38:25 AM
Fifteen years ago, I used to subscribe to the Economist and read it assiduously. I had the impression of being better informed than with other magazines.
Then the internet and the weblog came and the Economist became a lot less relevant to me.
Also, I noticed that when I knew a subject in-depth, the Economist coverage suddenly looked not so good: too ideological and neglecting important facts.
A case in point is energy, where they have a terrible track record: hyping Enron, hyping the California electricity deregulation, predicting that oil prices had only one way to go (down) in early 2000…
Also, their editorials (“Leaders”) are often quite annoying with their tendency to act as politicians and try to explain why they were right all along when it becomes clear that they were in fact mistaken. Case in point: the leader explaining in 2004 why they were right to support Bush over Al Gore in 2000, even though they decided to support Kerry in 2004, or the leader explaining why they had been right to support the war in Iraq.
Bottom line: I am still glad to pick up a free copy of the Economist from time to time when I travel, but I skip the leader and go in priority to the technology and science sections.
Posted by: fabrice at May 6, 2008 12:12:00 PM
What an interesting web of coincidences... Chris Blattman was a student of Dani Rodrik's in the MPA/ID... who recently had a post about the quality of The Economist:
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2008/03/should-i-start.html
Posted by: Holger Siebrecht at May 6, 2008 1:20:05 PM
Nevermind on my comment. I should've read Chris' post first.
Posted by: Holger Siebrecht at May 6, 2008 1:22:48 PM
Nevermind on my comment. I should've read Chris' post first.
Posted by: Holger Siebrecht at May 6, 2008 1:24:56 PM
Blattman and Rodrik annoy me. They seem to believe that the Economist aspires to be some sort of economics quasi-journal. It isn't - it is a newspaper. It may have a slightly different format to most, but it is still a newspaper.
Viewed as a newspaper, it is one of the better ones. They're all bad, but The Economist is one of the less bad.
Posted by: Bartman at May 6, 2008 2:22:46 PM
The Economist is a magazine, not a newspaper. They choose to self-identify as a newspaper, but they are in error.
Posted by: Spike at May 6, 2008 3:20:30 PM
While my reading of it goes back further, my subscribing to the Economist goes back over 50 years, when it was flown into the U S on newsprint paper with ink that smeared (cold set).
I would guess that one thing that has changed most in its evolution is the age (and terms of experience) of the "analytical" writers. Editors have shifted to much commentary content as well.
They still do some of the best "Surveys."
But the significance of all print media, as well as the visual and sound media (of briefer histories) is declining. Many, like the Big E, give good clues of where to look for more data, more learning - more questions. Big E is probably still the best of its genre.
Posted by: R.Richard Schweitzer at May 6, 2008 3:39:21 PM
I still remember reading in The Economist in the late 90's about how the ratio of rental prices and housing prices was decreasing, signaling a potential housing bubble ready to burst. Guess they were right!
Posted by: Mr. Econotarian at May 6, 2008 5:17:01 PM
I just blogged about the Economist and its quality.
I used to read the The Economist regularly and almost fanatically. Then I discovered some serious errors in a few articles on a somewhat obscure subject I happen to know a helluva lot about. I have a friend who is an international financial consultant, who knows a few things about finance and accounting, he too reports that he has caught, even a staid weekly such as The Economist, making serious errors of interpretation of various financial events.
Not surprising, I guess. If most journalists knew anything other than writing 'news', they'd probably be doing it.
I canceled my subscription to The Economist a while back.
http://varangy.blogspot.com/2008/05/fooled-by-randomness.html
Posted by: Varangy at May 6, 2008 5:51:50 PM
I can't even bear to listen to the song because the quoted couplets are so awful.
Posted by: Lindemann at May 6, 2008 6:57:08 PM
Um these are not real "rappers" any more than I'm a real "economist" because I read this blog.
Posted by: Paul N at May 6, 2008 10:22:37 PM
The Economist has no bias whatsoever. It is pure propaganda. In most civilized countries (mainly in Europe) The Economist [sic] is considered the semi-official magazine of the New World Order. Something like the 'worker newspapers' in Soviet Union.
Hulio!n
Posted by: Hulio!n at May 7, 2008 4:27:43 PM
