Which news magazine should I subscribe to?

March 31, 2008 2:03 PM

Let's say that I'm a college student that would like to expand my general knowledge about what's going on in the world, and let's say that I'd like to start subscribing to a weekly news magazine, and let's say that I generally have no knowledge of the differences between news magazines. Which one should I subscribe to, and why?

Through this company, whose flier was stuck in my bag when I bought my books for the quarter today, it would appear that I can get a year's subscription to TIME for $30 (and a free duffle bag!), Newsweek for $20, or US News and World Report for $15. Which would you suggest and why?

(And if there's anything scammy-looking about that company, feel free to shout out to me that I'm about to get scammed.)

Thanks all!

posted by Quidam to media & arts (69 comments total)

The Economist is a great place to start if you're willing to spend the $.
posted by gnutron at 2:06 PM on March 31 [7 favorites]

Oh, and I forgot to say that if there's others out there I ought to be considering besides the 3 that I listed, I'm open to that too. (The Economist? Christian Science Monitor?) Generally $30 and under would be great though.
posted by Quidam at 2:07 PM on March 31

That sort of crap's just gonna dumb you down.

I had Harper's (monthly) for a while, which tended to be reasonably intelligent, but I stopped because they sure did love to sell my name.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 2:07 PM on March 31

The Economist. Those other newsweeklies are junk.

Or, if it has to be one of those three, U.S. News (well, unless the duffle bag is worth more than fifteen bucks).
posted by box at 2:08 PM on March 31

Another vote for the Economist, if you want real news. Keep in mind that it's not US-centric, it's expensive, and it's very information-dense. I would subscribe (again), but I can't finish an issue in a week.
posted by meowzilla at 2:10 PM on March 31

nthing Economist. Worth every cent...
posted by chromatist at 2:11 PM on March 31

The Economist. Do not read the ones you listed, as you will learn nothing from them.
posted by Pastabagel at 2:11 PM on March 31

i have always enjoyed newsweek, since i was a teenager. it's always seem more digestible for younger readers to me than either time or USNews. i still have a subscription. when i graduated to a monthly, i went with the atlantic. i think it also depends on your political slant. i've always felt that newsweek skewed more towards readers that consider themselves left of center than the other two, but that's just my own personal opinion.
posted by violetk at 2:11 PM on March 31

I think you're right, violetk--Newsweek skews a teensy bit more young and liberal, US News a bit more old and conservative, with Time somewhere in the middle. But that description overstates it--all three are aimed squarely at the middle.

And that reminds me--The Nation is a weekly newsmagazine, and, while it's nowhere near as good as The Economist, I'd say it's better than any of the original three mentioned.
posted by box at 2:15 PM on March 31

The Economist is probably the best of those sorts of magazines, though of course you have to recognize its many biases. TIME and Newsweek are the educational equivalents of eating garbage out of a dumpster, though occasionally they do run some nice features. You can read these for free on their websites.
posted by 1 at 2:16 PM on March 31

Sorry, but also nthing The Economist. Its well worth the money though. Non-US centric, so you learn about the world outside these borders, its intelligent and well-written. Plus it covers some tech and media news, not just politics.
posted by Joh at 2:17 PM on March 31

I find the news in weekly newsmagazines, even excellent ones like The Economist, to be stale. If your goal is to learn more about world events, I think the best source is the Financial Times, which is written from a European perspective. I think they offer student subscriptions that would give you a year's worth of their daily paper online for under $50.
posted by A Long and Troublesome Lameness at 2:18 PM on March 31

If you haven't figured it out yet, it's THE ECONOMIST.

If you can read every word of it every week and digest it and remember it, you will be the most informed person in your community.
posted by mattbucher at 2:18 PM on March 31

I was in the exact same situation as you- college student looking to expand my knowledge about world events. And my godfather (a history prof) recommended The Economist, too. My boyfriend got me a subscription for Christmas, so I've been getting it since New Year's. And I love it! I'm definitely gonna renew my subscription next year, even with the cost.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:20 PM on March 31

One thing I like about The Economist is that it has a bias. It's easy to pick out - they take a position in their articles and make suggestions about what they think needs to be done. Much better than trying to claim no bias. And if it is just the news you want, still the best place to go.

On the website you linked, $75 will get you a full year. I know you can also get around 20 issues for $40, if you want to check it out with a smaller commitment.

Also, a print subscription gets you full access to their website, which contains a wealth of background/archive material.
posted by casaubon at 2:21 PM on March 31

Read the Economist, but also read London Review of Books, if you can get your hands on it.
posted by parmanparman at 2:25 PM on March 31

(And if there's anything scammy-looking about that company, feel free to shout out to me that I'm about to get scammed.)

You probably won't get scammed, but they will sell your name to every possible mailing list and direct marketing company they can think of. That's the whole purpose of those sorts of outfits.
posted by gyusan at 2:31 PM on March 31

Another vote for The Economist

COLORS magazine is also very good in taking big picture issues and dealing with them on a very personal level. Each issue takes a theme, for example, wealth, water, violence, death, and interviews people from all over the world about how said theme affects their life.

see the current issue http://www.colorsmagazine.com/money/

the print version is about $10, worth every penny for the photography alone.
posted by limited slip at 2:31 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]

The Economist has a student discount.
posted by stereo at 2:34 PM on March 31 [3 favorites]

As a fellow college student, I'll also recommend The Economist.
posted by andythebean at 2:39 PM on March 31

I shall also throw my vote behind the Economist. I would suggest a macro and micro economics course to go along with it, and a broad set of introductory science classes (as you did not mention your major). Without the econ classes, especially, some of the articles will be terribly difficult to understand fully. They cite opportunity costs more often than little boys break windows.

If the money is a concert, consider it an investment in a more awesome future you. Sell a pint of blood for $50 or something.
posted by enkiwa at 2:40 PM on March 31

Not a newsmagazine per se, but do consider the Sunday New York Times (you can subscribe to just the Sunday paper). It's like a weekly news magazine, but a whole lot thicker. Certainly, it's going to be significantly more expensive than $30 or so for a year, but reading it makes for a pretty enjoyable Sunday if you have the time and there really aren't a whole lot of publications that can match its breadth.
posted by zachlipton at 2:43 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]

While I don't generally agree with the Economist's editorial position, it is a superb news magazine. It refers to itself as a "newspaper" and that's because it's not a typical news magazine. Time, Newsweek, and US News are inferior to the Economist in almost every respect.

Have you considered subscribing to a newspaper? That's far and away the best way to get acquainted with the world. Last I checked, the Christian Sci. Monitor was selling student subs. for about $120. It's published 5 days a week. The Financial Times is published 6 days a week and is much denser. Student subs can be found for about the same price. The Wall Street Journal is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, so I can't recommend it anymore.

You're a college student, so go to your library and read some of them to get a feel for what they're all about.
posted by HotPatatta at 2:44 PM on March 31

I thought it was awesome when my roommate had the Economist. I'm generally oversaturated with reading material, so I couldn't justifying paying for it when I moved out. If I were to subscribe to a weekly news magazine though, The Economist was be it.
posted by Nelsormensch at 2:44 PM on March 31

Yet another vote for The Economist, though it would probably be offended for having been included in this thread, as I believe it refers to itself as a "newspaper."
posted by hawkeye at 2:45 PM on March 31

The Week magazine is sort of a meta-publication, in that it "distills the best of U.S. and foreign press into 44 pages." My folks get it, and while it's a breezy read, it's good way to get caught up on various topics of interest. Subscription comes out to a buck an issue.
posted by schoolgirl report at 2:46 PM on March 31 [1 favorite]

I vote for adding the Monitor to your print list, personally.
posted by DarlingBri at 2:51 PM on March 31

Absolutely NOT nthing the Economist. Bias is one thing -- you could just ignore their front-of-the-magazine editorials. But the reporting on the United States is almost universally terrible. One example: their take on Social Security is simply wrong. Not in a moral sense, in a mathematical sense.

YouNotSneaky on how (not) to read The Economist -- note that he has good things to say about some of the sections

Economist Dani Rodrik on his ambivalence towards The Economist

Crooked Timber on The Economist (drill down into the comments if you want arguments in favor of reading The Economist)

An example from economist Brad deLong on how The Economist simply lies some of the time (although he does have good things to say about other articles on a case by case basis).
posted by UrineSoakedRube at 2:51 PM on March 31 [3 favorites]

Just stopping by to nth The Economist. If you don't want to shell out the money, your school library almost certainly has it.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:53 PM on March 31

New Internationalist and Mother Jones are great too.
posted by cloeburner at 2:55 PM on March 31

If you're worried about bias, you will not find a bias-free news publication, you'll just find varying levels of honesty about their bias. So your best bet is to read a wide variety of quality sources -- The Economist, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, etc. Of course it would be prohibitively expensive to subscribe to all of those -- plus waaaaaay too much paper -- but most of them are free with registration and the others have cheap online subscriptions for students. So, when you find an issue or event you're interested in, check out those sites for their takes on it.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:57 PM on March 31

I liked reading The Week. As schoolgirl report says, it's not a terribly meaty publication but it's nice to get a brief overview of things that don't get a mention elsewhere.
posted by stefanie at 3:01 PM on March 31

The Economist is the best news magazine available, without a doubt. Nthing again.

If you like things on the left side of the spectrum, I'll also nth the Nation.
posted by slogger at 3:04 PM on March 31

If you can afford it, rather than subscribing to a weekly news magazine, I would highly recommend that you get a subscription to Stratfor. They're a world events, politics, and policy analysis organization, and they target executives and other types who need to make decisions about things that are happening in the world. In other words, it is their business not just to report, but to predict the future, and to be right as often as possible. This removes most, if not all, potential for bias, because if they allow opinions to cloud their judgment, their predictive accuracy will go down and they'll lose business.

I recommend that you sign up for one of their free weekly email newsletters; the Geopolitical one was my absolute favorite. They will not sell your name to anyone, and the depth of the analysis is really amazing. Furthermore, every couple of months they offer a fat discount on full Stratfor membership to newsletter subscribers. I jumped on one of these and got it for $150 or $180 for a year, instead of the standard $300+. Heck, you can also get a 7 day trial of the premium membership if you want, but you would probably have to pay full membership price after that.

The depth and breadth of information you will get from them is staggering, and it has totally changed my understanding of current world events, and of why the business model of typical news media hinders their ability to provide this kind of insight. I say that as the son of a 30 year veteran of a major American newspaper, and as a serious news hound who looks at a highly customized Google News page upwards of twenty times a day.
posted by autojack at 3:15 PM on March 31 [6 favorites]

Also n-thing the Economist.

The neat thing about the Economist from your stated position is that it is utterly, ruthlessly internationalist. Sit down and read it, and you will be reading a lot about what's going in Africa and south Asia and the far east -- EVEN WHEN WHAT IS GOING ON IS NOT IMMEDIATELY RELEVANT TO THE US!!!ELEVEN!

College student? I might just go to the current-periodicals area of the liberry every week.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 3:16 PM on March 31

When I was in college in the early '90s, my school's bookstore had a deal where students could get a monday through friday subscription to The New York Times for something like $30 a semester. I have no idea if that's still the case, but might be worth checking out at your place of education.
posted by jalexei at 3:18 PM on March 31

You're going to want to read two or more, with differing editorial slants. The economist is good for one of them, but I also like Harpers, Atlantic, maybe the occasional Utne Reader, Liberty magazine... (good to keep track of what the crackpots think too. [joke])

You're better off not subscribing, I'd say, just picking up a couple of mags from a newstand every so often. Make a list of crap magazines not to buy. Start with all of those you mentioned (Time/newsweek/etc) on the crap list. They're the equivalent of that show that had Katie Couric.

You might also check out Lapham's Quarterly to help with your perspective. Kind of pricey, though.
posted by ctmf at 3:23 PM on March 31

As someone who is interested in the answer to this question... I have to ask politely to UrineSoakedRube why he/she does not like the Economist?

I could not find any substance in any of the links you gave. All seemed to be unsubstantiated opinions. Some of them were downright insulting in their arrogance.

I'm honestly looking for good critiques of bias here, if you've got them.
posted by zhivota at 3:23 PM on March 31

I subscribe to a gazillion magazines. For "meatiness," definitely Economist. Christian Science Monitor's pretty good for world events as well. And nth'ing the Week for sort of an "overview" of what's going on in the world.
posted by edjusted at 3:28 PM on March 31

My vote goes to the Christian Science Monitor.

Basically, the Economist has a financial bias and the CSM has a bias in favor of reporting human rights abuses. The Economist is denser, and the CSM is daily, though it has a weekly format the culls the most important articles.

If you read the Economist for a long time, the op-eds will start to infect your thinking about the world. I'm not sure if there's a house economic theory, but I do get the sense that they're fairly wedded to a particular world-view, though not exactly to the Austrian or Chicago schools or anything like that.

Also, I'd recommend using Amazon for your magazine subscriptions, if you can. Safer, and possibly cheaper.
posted by anotherpanacea at 3:40 PM on March 31

I work at Columbia University. The paper magazines of choice that I see undergrad and grad students reading are the Economist and the New Yorker. The latter hasn't been mentioned so far here, but it typically has one long, well-written non-fiction piece each week, plus several other shorter news and culture items. Much of the content is online and you can find student subscriptions cheap.
posted by plastic_animals at 3:51 PM on March 31

Yup, the Economist. They're biased, though their biases don't match up with American biases (I am assuming you're probably American because you're considering the three main US newsweeklies.) However, they're very upfront about their opinions, and there's a great deal of information, very well-organized and condensed. All of my friends in college loved reading through them after I was done.

Once you're hooked on the newsmagazine thing, a few further suggestions: I tend to check out Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs when I can, though those are monthlies. If you want to know more about foreign policy - and particularly the arguments of policy-makers and world leaders on various topics - those magazines will give you a great deal of information. Very addictive. Harper's and the Atlantic (though particularly the former, these days) are left-leaning monthlies with a broader focus, but they generally have some pretty meaty articles, and help balance out the conservative. The Nation and Mother Jones can be worthwhile as well, though their articles are mostly briefer. If you can get a newspaper subscription, go for the New York Times. I also check out the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, die Zeit, der Spiegel, the Guardian, and the BBC on a semi-regular basis. Mostly the websites, of course, but it's great to be able to view things through a foreign lens.

If you have to get one of the three American newsweeklies, here's my experience: I did foreign extemporaneous speaking in high school, and at that point most of the topics were drawn from articles in those magazines. US News and World Report has the most foreign reporting. Time articles tend to be the most in depth. Newsweek's somewhere in the middle. All three are fairly mediocre, full of a lot of filler articles (for a while I was keeping count of how many times Jesus made the cover of each yearly), and tend to be centrist-conservative.
posted by ubersturm at 3:56 PM on March 31

Seconding the New Yorker as the best in in-depth reporting. It is not a primary news source, however.
posted by neuron at 4:14 PM on March 31

A weekly trip to the library to read them all is a good excuse to get out of the house, too.
posted by starman at 4:32 PM on March 31

The new yorker has a small section devoted to news, and it's excellent. I also believe that the best way to learn to write is to read good prose.

Newsweek,Time and their ilk are aimed at about a 10th grade reading level, but it won't do much to teach you about academic writing. They also cover very little news from a foreign perspective. I don't want to trash them, but your reading consensus, not reporting.

The CSM is an excellent paper, except for news on pharmaceuticals ;-) I prefer it to the Economist, but the Economist is a good magazine. I'd go for them both. Kill your television.
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 4:38 PM on March 31

I've got a better suggestion: read Metafilter :)
posted by polyglot at 4:43 PM on March 31

The Economist's coverage of environmental stuff is not good. It was not that they didn't cover it, but that their coverage was "we are applying our economic principles to things we don't really know much about." They overlooked some really important details. Some of their conclusions were very wrong. We were getting it at a shared house and one day, my two housemates (with a Ph.D. and Masters degree in environmental stuff) and I realized we had all independently reached the same conclusion.

They're great. Just not the be all end all on every topic.
posted by salvia at 5:05 PM on March 31

I don't recommend you use University Subscription Service. I subscribed to a few magazines through them last year and was quite disappointed -- it took an extremely long time for the subscriptions to start, and issues often arrived up to a week late. One of the magazines I subscribed to was the Economist, and though I didn't realize this at the time, I believe their student discount saves you just as much as USS does.

I'm going to agree with those above who suggest it'd be a better play for you to start reading a daily newspaper than a single weekly, at least unless you have superb reading retention.
posted by Cucurbit at 5:30 PM on March 31

If you fly but not enough to earn free flights (or have soon to expire miles), you could check out magazines for miles (American, Northwest, a few others have it). I eventually got a subscription from Economist & Atlantic. I like the former more than the latter so far.
posted by ejaned8 at 5:47 PM on March 31

If you decide to go with one of the big 3 newsmags, US News is by far the best of the three. Its editorial slant is admittedly right of-center (as opposed to slightly left Newsweek and Time), but it does a good job of covering a wide breath of issues without turning into people magazine (something I think Time and Newsweek do more than occasionally). It has the best feature articles (more thorough, more perspectives) and does the best job of political coverage, too. It always struck me as being a bit light on environmental coverage, though. You're gonna want to shred the John Leo columns, though, that guy loves cherrypicking random thoughts out of context and making entire articles out of it. Including plagarizing metafilter.
posted by Happydaz at 6:28 PM on March 31

The Economist, by the way, is the 9th top (for the day? week?) podcast in iTunes. A podcast comes out every 2 days or so and is about 15 minutes each.

The Guardian Weekly podcast does a great job of summarizing important items for that week. They're around 30 minutes each.

The big news outlets in the US aren't a complete waste, but they do often have big gaps in coverage.

To combat that, my favorite source of news is Google Reader. With free subscriptions (RSS and Atom) from a hundred or so sites of all types, I can skim what I don't want and focus on the interesting bits.
posted by muzzlecough at 7:29 PM on March 31

My vote's for the Sunday New York Times, as someone else mentioned above. It will have most of everything that the weekly newsmagazines will have and a ton more. The Sunday Magazine, included in the Sunday Times, is one of the best magazines being published right now, too.

Someone mentioned Harpers above, and while I've never really read the magazine, I'm a big fan of their Weekly Review.

I'd also add Slate's frequent Other Magazines column. That link is to the most recent column, but there's an rss feed just for the Other Magazines column. It's a roundup of the best articles in major magazines in the US.

And for weird and horrific news and weird takes on weird and horrific news, I'm a big fan of the Stranger's Last Days column. It's like Harper's Weekly Review but with a focus on the freakish and horrific and sometimes the very astounding, though usually without many citations; always worth a chuckle or an "oh my..." It's sometimes a bit Seattle-centric, but I haven't lived in Seattle for a few years and I still read the column every week.
posted by msbrauer at 7:45 PM on March 31

Funny, I asked this same question of my post-collegiate peers about 15 years ago and the answer then was also The Economist.

Maybe I should be reading it more often than just when I happen to pass through airports.
posted by intermod at 7:48 PM on March 31

Does no one read the New Yorker? Really amazing long articles, in depth and amazing writing. You aren't going to be up on day to day events but I'm not sure they matter as much as in depth stuff.
posted by sully75 at 8:12 PM on March 31

Economist, hands down. No other weekly newsmagazine comes close to its depth or breadth of reporting.

If you want something more US-oriented and left-leaning, go for The Nation, which is also excellent. It is also more interesting than Time, US News and Newsweek put together.
posted by charlesv at 8:33 PM on March 31

The Economist has really gone into decline in the last 10 years and turned into a Tory rag. You would do just as well watching Fox News. As an alternative you could give the Financial Times a try.
posted by JackFlash at 8:57 PM on March 31

Um, read The Economist with a grain of salt. First off, I am not saying it is a bad publication, or that you shouldn't read it. But it has a few flaws, some to do with its attitude and philosophy, some to do with how it appears to allocate its resources and assign stories.

For the most part, the Economist gives a more complete and well-thought-out view of most stories. It's designed for the globalist center-right news junkie and delivers. Think of it as kind of world news aggregator with an opinion.

However, it is inclined to report many events with a smart-alecky tone, which is fine, and with a disdain for local factors that is not fine. Its understanding of cultural peculiarities is often not good and grounded in this sort of old-style clubby Toryism that reduces everything to...economics (and clever headlines). And the smartest-kid-in-the-class Alex P Keaton thing can get tiresome.

The second problem is that its US coverage is abysmal, much worse than almost any other UK publication, and really far worse than the better American papers.

The third problem is that it has somehow gotten a reputation as being good at predicting things, when it is abysmal at this activity. Really bad.

When I've had the occasion to read the Christian Science Monitor, I have been favorably impressed. For reference, I'm also a regular reader of Harper's, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Guardian when I'm in the UK. Also sometimes the WSJ while assiduously avoiding the editorial page.
posted by lackutrol at 8:58 PM on March 31

Looks like I'm late to this party. If you're at all interested in science, then New Scientist is awesome, it's a weekly science news magazine from the UK. But you don't have to take my word for it.
posted by jpeacock at 9:14 PM on March 31

Man, I can't believe only two or three people have mentioned the New Yorker. I guess I'm number four.
posted by MadamM at 9:23 PM on March 31

I would like the New Yorker a lot more if it were a more national magazine. Some of the pieces in it are good, I certainly agree with that. Theater times, gossip about NY personalities, etc. I could do without. Someone needs to ask themselves about every piece before publishing, "Does someone in LA or SF or Seattle give a shit about or need to know this?"

That's just my opinion, though. Even with it's NY emphasis, some of the issues are worth it for the good parts. I suppose to a New Yorker, being a local paper is being national. Which irritates me about New Yorkers.
posted by ctmf at 11:01 PM on March 31

Unless it's improved in the last couple of years, New Scientist is (news section aside) terrible; endlessly publishing daft scepticism free quantum crankery and pre-publication cosmological wingnuttery. (for example) Scientific American is not what it used to be, but is still a pretty good read, and still features intelligent articles written by leading researchers.
posted by Luddite at 1:32 AM on April 1

I love reading the online version of the Christian Science Monitor. They have more in-depth news stories than a local paper and really get into the meat of an issue.

Think of it as a newspaper that has Sunday features every day.
posted by reenum at 8:32 AM on April 1

Just a warning against the Economist -- Today I stumbled across this old James Fallow's piece outlining some of its problems.

Basically, he says it's like the Wall Street Journal -- excellent reportage, but a condescending and often dishonest editorial line. I think that's pretty accurate -- the articles are usually excellent, but the Leaders and columns tend to be snotty.
posted by odragul at 9:08 AM on April 1

The New Yorker isn't really good for news. It has excellent reviews, the occasional exposee and in-depth analysis on particular topics, but it really is more of a journal of the arts as opposed to a resource for hard news. If you're looking for a magazine that's comprehensive in its scope, you really should look to something like the Economist or CSM, which have correspondents on the ground wherever the news is.
posted by odragul at 9:13 AM on April 1

I'll have to second The Atlantic, but for general news I would opt for listening to NPR
posted by Mike Johnson at 11:23 AM on April 1

And the smartest-kid-in-the-class Alex P Keaton thing can get tiresome.


Nthing the Economist.

Because I prefer smartest-kid-in-the-class, with all of its occasional arrogance, to shallow, populist, lowest-common-denominator crap.
posted by jason's_planet at 11:41 AM on April 1

If you fly but not enough to earn free flights (or have soon to expire miles), you could check out magazines for miles (American, Northwest, a few others have it).

I was just looking into this yesterday, and it's 3500 miles for a year. Which is a lot of miles. OTOH, if you don't travel much, that may be a worthwhile way to spend some that you otherwise wouldn't. (Fast Company is only 500 miles.)
posted by smackfu at 1:47 PM on April 1

Oh, bullshit, jason's_planet. As if I was suggesting "shallow, populist" alternatives.

Why does their US coverage suck? Because of, to quote the James Fallows piece cited above, "a stance so cocksure of its rightness and superiority that it would be a shame to freight it with mere fact." The attitude gets in the way of its often good reporting and sometimes good analysis.

Let's give credit where credit is due and not put a finger on the scales for the Tory "published in London" branding. Why should I care where it's published?
posted by lackutrol at 9:05 PM on April 1

Dude, relax. The reference to shallow, populist rags was to Time and Newsweek, not to any of the higher-brow alternatives you suggest.
posted by jason's_planet at 10:13 AM on April 3