Matthew Ingram vs. Tom Standage: The Economist’s Digital Strategy Considered Harmful

If The Economist is going to add value for society, it will have to become a trusted information intermediary, rather than just seem to be a trusted information intermediary. It may survive, and it may return healthy profits to its conglomerate owners and lavish salaries to its workers if it seems to be a trusted information intermediary, but, really, is that the point?

Does Matthew Ingram and I cannot be the only people who are deeply alarmed at the internet strategy that the very sharp Tom Standage has just outlined for the Nieman Journalism Lab. If you focus on becoming a trusted information intermediary, you may well make it. If you just focus on seeming to be a trusted information intermediary, you surely will not make it.

Matthew Ingram: The Economist wants to give you a sense of completeness, even if that’s an illusion — Medium: “There’s a great interview over at the Nieman Journalism Lab with Tom Standage, deputy editor for digital at The Economist

The Economist wants its audience to feel like they have learned whatever they need to know about a topic by reading its coverage, regardless of what format it appears in:

We sell the antidote to information overload–we sell a finite, finishable, very tightly curated bundle of content…. The promise we make to the reader is that if you trust us to filter and distill the news, and if you give us an hour and a half of your time, then we’ll tell you what matters…

What the Economist is selling is an illusion…. But that illusion can be very powerful, and very appealing…. There’s something very satisfying about… thinking ‘Okay, I’m done now.’… The Economist doesn’t link out to either other media outlets or even external websites in its digital offerings…. Linking to other websites or sources of information would ruin the illusion of completeness… readers would be worried that they weren’t being completely informed. So the magazine doesn’t do it. [Standage:]

Another aspect of it is that we don’t do links…. If you want… links you can… go on Twitter and get as many as you like. But the idea was everything that you need to know is distilled into this thing that you can get to the end of, and you can get to the end of it without worrying that you should’ve clicked on those links…. We’ve clicked on the links already…. We’ve decided what’s interesting…

I’m not sure I can agree with Standage on his approach. I understand why it makes for a saleable product for The Economist…. But… it leaves… out… something critically important… the ability to check, verify, expand on and test the assumptions in a particular piece…

Besides, in my experience there are few things more annoying than having a discussion with someone has read 1000 words in The Economist, has had its authoritative tone trigger his Dunning-Kruger effect, and really does sincerely believe that now he knows it all.

April 2, 2015

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