# The Economist

87 Hacker News commenters recommended The Economist and 75 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 10 years (11 owners).

**Verdict:** Recommended for in-depth world and business analysis and a weekly pace that filters noise. Critics often cite doctrinaire economics coverage and weak AI takes.

## Why people recommend it

- Well-researched, carefully sourced journalism (6 comments): "they do consult actual research and more so than most other English language publications" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831043)) "publish their opinions with conviction and back it up with sound arguments and facts" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48828499)) "They tend to hire well reasoning journalists that do research with due dilligence." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989003))
- Good coverage of world news (5 comments): "a subscription to some news organization that covers the world in general, not just to read whatever you see on social media" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45824803)) "The Economist rocks. They also have a wonderful daily summary of the news that takes five mins to read." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793231)) "weekly Economist coverage of world/biz/general topics (audio via app) - keeps me generally up to date" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807178))
- Weekly pace favors analysis over headlines (3 comments): "The Economist as a weekly publication does a lot of filtering of course anyway due to their publishing schedule" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018203)) "The weekly pace of publication also encourages analysis over “Trump puts tariffs on soybeans” headlines." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48689255)) "Weekly news is a fast enough cadence that also filters out noise and nonsense" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46417045))
- Strong, concise writing (3 comments): "They tend to hire well reasoning journalists that do research with due dilligence." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46989003)) "It's actually quite good for a publication that rarely publishes good content." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49276553)) "A smart, very good writer will write something and get to the point quickly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50085947))

## What people warn about

- Doctrinaire pro-market economic views (5 comments): "I unsubscribed (after many years) out of frustration at their incessant and unquestioning incantation of orthodox economic dogmas" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792965)) "A newspaper called The Economist should not take a hyper-critical view of conservatism or right-leaning politics across the globe" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089432)) "Yet another in the "Free market capitalism is weird and scary to us" series from the (increasingly poorly named) Economist." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48333830))
- Weak AI and technology coverage (4 comments): "the are hopeless with AI. Most of their articles on subject sound like they were written by the Anthropic marketing department." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040003)) "The Economist might be a very reputed journal but their technology and especially AI related takes are absolute garbage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49467913)) "Betteridge's law wrapping a paywall wrapping an AI piece masquerading as domain-specific analysis." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792218))
- Hard to unsubscribe (2 comments): "when I do a web search I find a lot of people complaining about their similar practice of making it difficult to unsubscribe" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48402699)) "Unsubscribing from The Economist was one of the most frustrating corporate interactions I've ever had." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48402990))
- Declined after a columnist left (2 comments): "The Economist used to be a good publication until McElthwaite left for Bloomberg about 10-12 years ago." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46660604)) "I trust it over nearly all the others though it’s gone downhill since McElthwaite left for Bloomberg" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47056858))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [New York Times subscription](https://hackerapproved.com/p/new-york-times.md): 68 recommend
- [Apple News](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apple-news.md): 29 recommend
- [Wall Street Journal](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wall-street-journal.md): 21 recommend
- [The Atlantic magazine subscription](https://hackerapproved.com/p/atlantic.md): 21 recommend
- [Wired magazine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wired.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "The Economist", https://hackerapproved.com/p/economist/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).