2/2     I'm about to buy a magazine subscription. I'm trying to decide
        between: Harpers, The New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair,
        and The Economist. Any opinions/suggestions?
        \_ Sign your post. This was one of the better motd threads!
        \_ liberal!
           \_ hm... more of an indictment than a suggestion. But thanks! -op
           \_ The Economist is pretty damned conservative. They are totally
              in favor of bombing Iraq, w/ or w/o the UN.
         \_The Economist seems like somewhat of an odd duck in that selection.
            \_ you mean it doesn't suck? yeah, i agree.
        \_ Quite amusing. I used to subcribe to three of those (Harpers,
           The New Yorker, and The Economist). It really depends on what
           you're into.
           1) The New Yorker -- nowhere near as good as in Tina Brown's
               days, but stil worth reading for (a) the cartoons and
               (b) Seymour Hersch' occasional exposes.
               \_ I can't speak for current New Yorker, but Tina Brown era
                  was, relatively speaking, pretty bad.  Brown sold issues
                  because she was good at hyping the magazine, but not much
                  else.
           2) Harper's -- give you nice warm fuzzies if you're a
               midwestern small college, Madison Wisconsin-educated,
               Prairie Home Companion-listening type. The articles
               tend to be good, if a bit self-righteous, plus you get
               to read Lewis Lapham's monthly whinings.
           3) The Economist -- I've been a subscriber to this since I was
               seventeen. I joke that it's an excellent British humour
               magazine. Still, it has good international reporting,
               plus has in-depth analyses of a specific country or
               business or trend every few weeks. An excellent way of
               knowing what's going on in the rest of the world, especially
               if you tend to feel your intelligence insulted by
               Time or Newsweek or the like.
               \_ Agreed.  I used to read it exclusively for the news and
                  ignored the bits about business and the economy.  Its
                  politics are refreshingly obvious, which makes them
                  easy to ignore. --erikred
           If you want more details, email me -coganman
        \_ I subscribe to the same three as coganman, but I am letting
           my New Yorker subscription lapse, as half of it is about the
           New York art scene, which I am not interested in. The other
           half has some gems, but not worth wading through, imho. Harpers
_
           is consistently good, comes once a month and can be read in one
           sitting. The Economist is always well written, but often about
           quite esoteric subjects: how interested are you in the exchange
           rate of the Ringgit, for example, which they seem to write about
           every week. The Economist comes weekly and is quite dense, expect
           to spend 3-4 hr/wk reading it. It is also relatively quite expensive.
           You should add Atlantic Monthly to your list, btw. -ausman
           \_ the new yorker has had some really interesting
              middle east and afghanistan articles lately
           \_ I second the Atlantic Monthly recommendation and recommend
              checking out their website once in a while.
           \_ this has proven to be quite a hard decision. yes, I was
              considering adding Atlantic Monthly to my list as well. I
              am currently living in NYC... so the half of the New Yorker
              about arts in  the city would actually be interesting to me.
              \- the economist before anything else. then the NYker.
                 i like the NYRevBooks too. buy the Atlantic if they have a
                 long article you are interested in. atlantic is pretty cheep.
                 forget the rest. do you have time to read 3mags/wk? --psb
                 \_ I read NY Review of Books online...
        \_ Economist is not as good as it used to be.  There used to be
           more writings about the Ringgit, but now it is more and more
           like Time magazine, with a US-centric view of the world.
           The magazine feels more and more dominated by Yankee editors.
           It's not that they are necessarily wrong, it's just that I might as
           well watch CNN for that.  Still I would take Economist over the other
           two, since I fall asleep reading the other two.
                \- well i agree the e'ist has slacked off a little. however
                   if you want general purpose weekly where the science
                   writing that doesnt have to remind you the nucleus consist
                   of protons and neutrons, pick the e'ist. if you want to
                   not only read an article about the asian currency crisis
                   talking about the USD-ringgit exchange rate, but you want
                   to read an article 5 years later about "new acdemic inter-
                   preations of the asian meltdown", again this is soemthing
                   the economist "economics focus" will write on, but others
                   will not. TIME is written for 8th graders and the e'ist
                      average 8th graders and colleg students, which is
                      minute.  If you read e'ist for a while and have
                   for people who went to college. --psb
                      analysis over time, you will find it at the same level
                      as Larry King Live or 60 Minutes.  It is the same kind
                      packaged to different education background.  You might
                      have information there you do not find mentioned on the
                      rest of the stuff that you read, but if you belive what
                   \_ Yes the difference in the level of actual intelligence
                      subscribe to USA Today only.  It does not cost that much.
                      between e'ist and time is similar to that between
                      average 8th graders and average college students, which
                      is minute.  If you read e'ist for a while and have
                      the attention span or concentration to compare their
                      analysis over time, or if you examine their article on
                      subjects you are familiar with, you will rank it the same
                      as Larry King Live or 60 Minutes.  It is the same kind of
                      stuff packaged to different education backgrounds.  You
                      will have information there not covered on the other
                      things that you might read, but if you belive what
                      you read based on where it is printed, you might as well
                      subscribe to USA Today only.  It has more weight/buck.
                      \- it's not a matter of beliving it all. the relevance
                         is as follows. 1. the articles are shorter because
                         the dont have to include details like "iraq, a country
                         in the middle east, ...". 2. often they indirectly
                         allude to stuff that will give you an extra level
                         of understanding if you are familar with an academic
                         approach to the topic. for examples the terrorist
                         and the time bomb is kind of a classic from philosophy
                         classes. if you are not familar with that, you get
                         some appreciation of the issues taking it at face
                         value. if you are familiar with the "trolly problem"
                         discussion, you get some bonus material. 3. they have
                         have some funny and semi obscure jokes that are fun,
                         like the article "ave atque vale" some issues back.
                         4. in terms of subject material, there is some stuff
                         that will be of interest to the educated classes which
                         you will NOT see on 60min or L. KING. bright people
                         who are not economists will not read econometrica
                         or other professional econ journals or working papers
                         but they may be interested now and then on interesting
                         reasearch developments on say refinements to the
                         neoclassical growth model, post solow, or to say
                         a new theory about NAIRU ... obviously if you dont
                         know what NAIRU is, like most TIME readers, this will
                         be of limited interest. 5. the e'ist typically has
                         better graphs, charts etc than other people because
                         the can opt to choose more complicated graphs ...
                         probably not an option for usa today because usa
                         today readers would probably confused by a
                         thermometer that read both degF and degC. --psb
        \_ Weekly Standard or National Review if you actually want to
           provoke thought.
           \_This comment would be funny if it weren't so sad.
                \_ Can you elaborate on your erudition or do you lack
                   the pretense?
                   \_ if you're going to use big words, you really should
                      figure out what they mean first.  -tom
                      \_ Fascinating how every time I see criticisms of WS or NR
                         they are ad hominem.
        \_ 1. The Economist 2. Nation 3. Atlantic Monthly.
           Honorable Mention: Harpers, Foreign Affairs