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The Economist (Medium)
medium.economist.com · Company blog · on HN since 2017
The Economist's Medium blog explains editorial choices, data journalism, and charts, with posts on corrections and anonymous authorship.
What HN saysCommenters link it to explain why writers are anonymous and for its data visualization retrospective, and some defend the publication's quality and rigor.
48HN people shared it
15linked it in comments
37stories submitted
1.2Kstory points
1 year agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Mistakes, we’ve drawn a few6 people · 443 points · first shared 2019 · 83 comments on HN
- 2Why are The Economist’s writers anonymous?6 people · 192 points · first shared 2017 · 127 comments on HN
- 3Can we know what animals are thinking?5 people · 175 points · first shared 2017 · 226 comments on HN
- 4Publishing more data behind our reporting5 people · 158 points · first shared 2018 · 9 comments on HN
- 5Would Donald Trump be president if all Americans voted?4 people · 9 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 6Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time3 people · 7 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 7Why people get happier as they get older2 people · 5 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 8The art of writing an obituary2 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 9You sometimes need to break the rules in data viz2 people · 2 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 10How The Economist covers the world1 people · 125 points · first shared 2017 · 43 comments on HN
- 11Data visualisation, from 1987 to today1 people · 85 points · first shared 2018 · 9 comments on HN
- 12The curious history of the clothespeg (2016)1 people · 24 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 13Data journalism at The Economist gets a home of its own in print1 people · 5 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 14South-East Asian cities are waging war on street food1 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 15What’s it like to ride in a self-driving car?1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
andsoitis · 2025-10-04
> it doesn't even get an author name attached
The Economist is very intentional with their editorial stance.
If you're curious, it is worth reading why their writers are anonymous: https://medium.economist.com/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous-…
joshe · 2024-05-17
Context is important, this is targeted at journalists. They are usually trying to make a point to casual readers.
For readers with more interest or who are numerate in their day jobs (engineers, finance, or economists), dual axis charts can often be a great choice.
This is better graph style advice from the Economist, which includes good dual axis examples and one bad one and how to correct it. https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-few-8cdd8a42d368
Since we are engineers or founders trying to deal with very complex systems, adding detail and clarity like the Economist or Edward Tufte does is the better way to go.
wanderingmind · 2021-09-28
Except CS, or if you an international Olympiad champion, PhD is a bad idea across the board. Even if someone thinks they want to do a PhD, its better to work for a few years to understand market forces so they can do a thesis that is not fully removed from reality. This medium blog post from economist is a worthy read
https://medium.economist.com/why-doing-a-phd-is-often-a-waste-of-time-…
systemvoltage · 2021-04-05
I've been reading the Economist for more than 15 years. I couldn't disagree with you more. This publication gets posted here so often because it is excellent IMO. It has a great balance of humor and rigor, they have great insights based on data, common trends, public opinion, government stance, etc. Weekly, I read a hard copy of it usually on Sunday mornings. Perhaps, I am biased of off habit.
They admit their mistakes openly: https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-few-8cdd8a42d368
piffey · 2020-02-27
I loved this look back on data visualization from The Economist. You might as well.
https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-few-8cdd8a42d368
danial · 2019-12-09
https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/sections/360001508894-Custom-domains
Other popular publications that use custom domains on Medium:
https://m.signalvnoise.com/
https://medium.economist.com/
https://blog.coinbase.com/
It's now deprecated for new services, though.
simonh · 2019-04-08
The stabilising effect of monogamy isn't to prevent wars between nations and societies, it's to manage violence and conflict within a society. It works too and is not just a small effect. Of the 20 most unstable countries in the world, all 20 are very to somewhat polygamous[0].
[0]https://medium.economist.com/big-love-and-big-war-exploring-the-link-b…
robocat · 2025-01-06
> But I don’t see a byline on this
The Economist doesn't use bylines for their articles: https://medium.economist.com/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous-…
monospaced · 2024-12-11
The economist articles are unsigned: https://medium.economist.com/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous-…
gilbertbw · 2024-12-11
The economist doesn’t do bylines. See https://medium.economist.com/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous-…
smcnally · 2022-02-23
~no regwall
https://medium.economist.com/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous-…
and previous discussion
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14015708
Redoubts · 2021-05-26
Well, they only started using R a year or so ago, so they can be forgiven.
> Until fairly recently, we were less comfortable with statistical software (like R) that allows more sophisticated visualisations.
https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-few-8cdd8a42d368
hprotagonist · 2021-05-16
“Gender” is related to “genre”, and means merely a group of nouns lumped together for grammatical purposes. Linguists talk instead of “noun classes”, which may have to do with shape or size, or whether the noun is animate, but often rules are hard to see. George Lakoff, a linguist, memorably described a noun class of Dyirbal (spoken in north-eastern Australia) as including “women, fire and dangerous things”.
To the extent that genders are idiosyncratic, they are hard to learn. Bora, spoken in Peru, has more than 350 of them.
https://medium.economist.com/we-went-in-search-of-the-worlds-hardest-l…
cranekam · 2021-04-05
I think the obits are all written by one person, Ann Wroe. I heard a really good interview with her a few years ago but I can't find it now. https://medium.economist.com/the-art-of-writing-an-obituary-e64a546222… is reasonably interesting.
sohkamyung · 2018-10-10
The Economist plans to release more of its data as outlined in this post [1]
[1] https://medium.economist.com/peeling-back-the-curtain-487bd3be0c47