think tank forum

I've been passively looking for a good news source for a few weeks now, and finally subscribed to The Economist. I think it's one of the most solid news sources I've read and is certainly better than than what I've read in weekly news magazines like Time and Newsweek.

I got 4 free issues + student pricing. I think I paid 77 USD or so for a year (it's weekly).

I tried reading it online for a while, but that limits my reading time as I like to read on the train and stuff.

I'm excited!

y-yeah! rule britannia! economist is the greatest newsmagazine. i have been getting it for about six years. (!)

i generally read the financial times, more now that i am in the UK. when i am in canada i read the globe and mail, mainly the report on business section.

i also find myself reading sketchy free newspapers in london... metro, city a.m., thelondonpaper, etc. the times and the telegraph on weekends.

man, Metro is literally everywhere. that's the only free daily newspaper in Boston. we had the Boston Now for a few months but they went under. oh well, they both suck/-ed.

I don't necessarily always agree with The Economist on everything, but I find that they're almost always up-front about what they think of an issue, and I respect that. they also seem to be willing to concede when they were wrong about something. like in this article they say

In highlighting the improved conditions in Iraq we do not mean to justify The Economist's support of the invasion of 2003 (see article). Too many lives have been shattered for that. History will still record that the invasion and occupation have been a debacle. Iraqis even now live under daily threat of violent death: hundreds are killed each month. They remain woefully short of the necessities of life, such as jobs, clean water and electricity. Iraq's government is gaining confidence faster than competence. It is still fractious, and in many places corrupt.

yeah, they are very rational about their doings, which i suppose is a good thing when it comes to policy.

i generally agree with them, but i've become pretty apathetic politically. i predicted this years ago...

and there are four free dailies in london

metro - crappy
city a.m. - crappy, but in the financial world at least
london lite - tabloid++ pretty much the worst thing ever
thelondonpaper - sleazy but not sensational

that must be nice, having options. oh well, the free dailies seem to generally suck. the Boston Now had articles that were just blog posts from users on their website, and they were nearly always the most miserably written, poorly though-out shit ever. I felt like reading them made me dumber.

I'm not so much apathetic as I am uncommitted. I have certain things that I don't really waver on like the death penalty and...actually I can't think of anything else. I do generally have a kind of socialist perspective or vision, in that I am primarily concerned with the welfare of human beings. however, I try to temper this with a realistic view of the world. I float around or remain ambiguous about stuff a lot, which I am perfectly ok with!

Yes, there are certain things that I feel strongly about, but for the most part I'd consider myself a moderate liberal democrat (centre-right in Anglo countries).

liberal in the economic sense (i.e., like The Economist is liberal)?

I don't think I could really label myself since I'm unsure of so many things! didn't we have a political compass thread on here...?

yes we did

bbc news, cnn, dailyrotten, gothamist

and... word of mouth.

ttf

a headline from today's metro - 'hookers screwed by credit crunch' and 'after .com and .uk, are you up for some .sex?'

...

I just subscribed to Mother Jones. I've been reading it online a lot lately and it's been pretty great. Harper's is good too, but I don't like it as much. I read The Nation for a while and when one of their blog posts came out unconditionally on the side of China in the US-selling-arms-to-Taiwan thing I got kind of pissed and stopped reading them.

so here's everything I have in my google reader:

print news (and some with blogs):
harpers.org
motherjones.com
theeconomist.com

blogs:
thebulletin.org
badscience.net
citmedialaw.org
eff.org
undeadly.org
schneier.com
tomdispatch.com

what the hell

check out the revision history on that, lucas.

I tried reading National Review as well to get at least one non-"liberal" source of news, but the web content is like totally different than the print magazine and it basically sucked wicked bad.

p.s. fuck the rss feed for showing EVERY FUCKING REVISION

this belongs in the thread, because the rss feed is the only place i get my news

twitter .....

Naw I'm kidding.

I get news on twitter too! @wikileaks mostly. and I follow a lot of the stuff which I subscribe to via rss too.