The Economist - News, Podcasts Reviews

by Uridiidjeifn

Excellent content, terrible app. I use TheEconomist (and subscribe to The Economist) solely to listen to the audio edition. Usually I listen while doing something else: driving, riding a motorcycle, in the gym, on an airplane, etc. Usually I am also using other apps such as for navigation , and often with no or intermittent internet access. In older versions of TheEconomist , this was not a problem. There is an option to download the audio file and play it back through TheEconomist . However, updates over the past year have made this feature virtually unusable. Often it will randomly stop playing, and I need to pull over, restart TheEconomist (which restarts from the beginning of the edition) and then advance it to the right article. Sometimes it just doesn’t play at all. Why it would have such difficulty playing an already downloaded file is unclear, but I suspect there is some sort of over-aggressive anti-piracy feature interfering with smooth playback. If this is not resolved and TheEconomist remains unusable I will have no reason to maintain a subscription.

by Ken Waters

I used to love listening to The Economist audio edition until a particular feature was removed. I used to be able to organise my audio playlist in a specific order; the world this week, then the business section, then finance, and afterwards a few select articles chosen among the remaining sections. I was able to go through the edition and organise everything once, then start and stop listening with the confidence that the playlist remained in the order I prioritised.

Now whenever I add to the audio playlist it's always ordered in the way The Economist is (The World This Week, Leaders, Letters, etc) and I can arrange the playlist to my priority, which I used to do for the past few years....now I don't even want to bother with The Economist at all since I now have to either keep track of what I listened to manually and/or keep adding/removing to the playlist in order to listen while I'm doing other tasks. Very unfortunate. It would be VERY much appreciated if the feature to customise the order of the audio playlist is made available once again. Thank you.

by Tj56432

The Economist article on Economics topics are generally of high quality and well documented and researched BUT those on the middle conflict and in particular those presenting facts about the actual events are biased and distorted. They cover up Israel crimes. Fir example when reporting about Gaza, the article don't miss to mention that Gaza is ruled by Hamas. Israel is also ruled by criminals. The article miss to mention that the people in Gaza are under siege and are in an open prison imposed by the racist and criminals ruling Israel. There is no human face of the Economist when reporting about Israel crimes. How do the Economist consider the Oppressed and the eco pied at the same footing as the oppressor and the occupier. "Conflict" is a dishonest way to report in an occupation where a whole generation of a whole nation was destroyed, killed, put in prison, dépréciés of basic human needs and even water just to be racially eliminated and deported from own home to live, if managed to survive, as refugees in foreign lands.

by Mngal20

This a good news source. It’s very well done hence the two stars, however 1. It’s really expensive ($220 a year unless you complain and threaten to cancel) 2. I’m not sure what’s harder, a divorce or cancelling this news subscription. First you can’t do this easily on TheEconomist you have to go to, “contact us” on TheEconomist , look in the FAQ’s where you can then log in. At that point you find, “change my subscription”. There’s a button that says, “cancel my subscription”, you’re asked why, then you’re given a sales pitch in writing based on your reason. In order to move forward with the cancellation you’re required to chat with them! A sales representative joins the chat, then I was asked AGAIN to provide my name and address and why I wanted to cancel, they tried to keep me again by offering a discount. Finally the rep cancelled my subscription. This entire process took me over 20 minutes. Making it that hard to cancel on purpose so people give up and keep giving money is bad business.

by Hiatus

- I wish I could download all the images in advance for offline access, like I can for the text and the audio, and like I could with the classic app. At least the image streaming works better after the latest fixes. It is a huge data hog and increased my phone bill, so streaming over cellular isn’t a good option for me.
- Audio needs a bit of love. Needs a 1.25x setting which would be the sweet spot for speed of playback. It frequently starts playing at the wrong speed. 15-second skip back should be the default back button for use in my car, rather than skip to the previous article. Narration sounds good.
- It remembers where I was reading, but only one article... I can’t swipe to the next one in the weekly.
- When re-finding my place, Clicking on the hamburger menu to find sections and then clicking on the section often doesn’t work. Other times the section headers are rendered offscreen, maybe after switching from landscape to portrait mode.

by Msb64

Firstly, I’m an iOS user and get my content from the Economist primarily via audio. This content is fantastic - no complaints and gets five stars. But this is an app review and TheEconomist is frustrating for several reasons but I’ll just complain about the most frustrating here. You would think that after downloading the weekly edition that the response to article selection would be immediate but, no. It usually takes between 15 and 30 seconds to begin playing the supposedly “downloaded” content. This doesn’t make sense and is hugely frustrating when I’m driving and want to keep my attention on the road while being able to listen.

It really seems to me that the architecture of TheEconomist needs reworking with perhaps a well-designed audio player being integrated into the rest of the “content delivery system”.

by Misanthrope™

The Economist is the best for keeping up to date without the hysterics of the US media. My rating is really more for TheEconomist .

There are a few things I notice that need to be addressed:

1) When reading an article, occasionally one has to stop and address other things, and when one returns to TheEconomist , one would expect to pick up where one left off, but too often TheEconomist resets back to the main page, and one has to start over… even to the point of looking for the article again. This should not be.

2) Related to #1, having a history tab would be handy, especially when looking for recent articles one has read.

3) When using apps on multiple devices, such as iPhone and iPad, signed into the same account, what one does on the iPhone should be reflected on the iPad, and vice versa. If one saves a favorite on one device, it should be under favorites on the other device. If one received a check mark on one device for completion of an article, it should reflect that on the other device, as well.

Other than these things, TheEconomist and the content are generally excellent. I just hope something will be done about the above three things.

by Teehale

I’ve been subscribed to The Economist for several years and the audio edition has become my primary method of consumption. It’s very convenient to listen to the articles during my commute or while working around the house.

The latest update seems to have fixed the audio playback issues where article audio would take forever to load and then crash somewhere in the middle, losing your progress. I haven’t had any of these issues since updating to the latest app version.

I would give TheEconomist 5 stars but have taken off a star due to the lack of AirPlay support for the audio edition. I can play all my music and podcasts through my AirPlay speakers, but not The Economist - please add this.

by TopherDealio

I’ve been subscribed to TheEconomist through iTunes for years, now all of a sudden it won’t let me log in.
Also, I get a free membership to the Economist through my school’s library, and there’s no way to log into TheEconomist using that. I’ve been paying anyway, which was frustrating, and now it won’t even let me log in at all even though I’m paying for it.

I’ve tried clicking the “Restore your purchase through iTunes” button and it gives me an error. I’ve tried logging on with user name and password and it tells me to log on through the iTunes option. I tried deleting and reinstalling TheEconomist , restarting my phone, and nothing seems to work.

I’ve logged on successfully via the website, but it doesn’t have all the same features as TheEconomist , such as the Morning Briefing, which is what I primarily what I read every morning.

I would give this zero or negative stars if possible because I currently can’t use it at all and it therefore provides me negative utility, due to all the time I’ve wasted trying to log on.

If someone can help me resolve this, I will gladly update this review to 4 or 5 stars.

by Nois88

TheEconomist used to be atrocious. I mean, it basically worked, and it was better than nothing, but it was a really poor user experience. They’ve since cleaned it up, fixed some bugs causing it to crash, and recently introduced some new UI features.

But there are a couple things I would like to see. #1, if you see an economist ad on Facebook and click the link, it’ll not take you to TheEconomist . Instead you have to click the “open in browser” button. Even then it locks it behind a paywall when I have TheEconomist installed and I am logged in. Any other app (especially social media apps) give you a banner to “open in app”. I don’t want to log into the mobile site to access an article.

There’s also a bug I’ve been getting where I open an article and the text is all glitched out - there’s maybe a word or two on the page and then nothing below that.

One last thing, it’s mainly quality of life: Sometimes I’ll have already read an article, and then I get a push notification suggesting I read the article. Perhaps you could keep track of whether I’ve read an article before pushing out that notification?

One last thing, and again it’s quality of life: it would be nice to be able to manage my subscription in-app.

Most of these are smaller points, and TheEconomist has come a long way. Kudos to the developers.

by Mark7896543

The Economist has a track record that each time it releases an app - the experience gets worse.

So what about the new app?

I originally planned to give this one star - as the audio download functionality seemed so bad - initially it would only play one track at a time and the week after I downloaded it the audio stopped working entirely and I had to go back to using the (really truly horribly appalling) Economist legacy app.

However audio on the new app has suddenly burst back into life - but only when connected to the internet. For some reason the”audio download” feature doesn’t work so you are unable to listen offline - or on a plane etc......and some articles don’t download at all.

The good news is that, now the text size is once again suitable for reading by adults, rather than the 18pt size used in the previous version, it deserves better than 1 star.

However you can now no longer choose your region - which is a bit of a shame as it drives the order in which articles are presented to you.

In all - once again the Economist has produced a non-functioning App.

Shame because in 2012 they had a great app that worked. Here’s an idea - perhaps we go back to that one.

by JZ - Chicago

I started reading The Economist 30 years ago. I have subscribed the entire time without interruption. It is the best conceived, written and edited newspaper in the English language.

Most of those 30 years I carried the hard copy with me around the world, reading it cover to cover. With TheEconomist no need to even carry the hard copy. Though I must admit, with inserts removed and folded in half along long axis, it was quite convenient.

Getting something new each day is a nice upgrade to the weekly version. In the hard copy days I would sometimes finish whole issue before next one arrived - Economist withdrawal. A nice, new, 15 minute taste every day paces me better

by BennieCas

I love this mag. I mean I really do (Econ Major at UCO btw). The only complaint I have is the excess of ads despite me paying the full price. Otherwise I think that this is the most worthwhile news source to date. A lot of people used to consider The Economist to be a conservative newspaper, but truly I tell you that it has done a 180 in 2020, they really just use economics alone as their guiding subject. They were supporting the vaccine when it was first out and mostly a political issue. They don’t pander to leftists or conservatives very often or really at all. Also they take good critical letters from respected individuals in their letters section. I truly enjoy disagreeing with an article and then finding someone smarter than me who wrote exactly why it is wrong, I could go on and on about this magazine. I love the formatting (shorter less fiddly articles, with all of the facts and as little opinion as possible) and I’m definitely a lifelong customer as long as that Economist quality is retained. I also really enjoy how the economist never says we think that (…) they always say this is the way to fix it or just state things how they are based on economic indications. There is actual evidence to back up economics, rather than some crazy conservative conspiracy theory, or a radical leftist rant. I don’t think they’re always right but this leads to a level of honesty. Excellent customer service also.

by Soccrosse43

I’m new to The Economist after a suggestion from a relative. My goal was to be more purposeful and engaged in the content that I consume and break the habit of endless scrolling of news headlines via Twitter, Google’s and Apple’s customized news outlets. I find myself actually wanting to read the content published by The Economist rather than skimming headlines. I enjoy learning about what’s going on around the world rather than being inundated by insignificant headlines that make many of the other news outlets’ front pages just to get clicks. It’s a completely different experience. For times when I can’t read the content, like while driving, or if I want to consume some of their longer form content but want to give my eyes a rest from screen fatigue, it’s nice they offer users the option to listen to the content as well. The daily Espresso emails are short bursts of content in the AM while I have my coffee and then throughout the day I can read further the content that I’m interested in. Thanks The Economist!

Suggestion for future app improvements:
(1) Give users the ability to double tap the “Home” button at the bottom to quickly jump to the top of the page.
(2) Give users the ability to better organize their Saved content. Either give them ways to create folders to organize their content, or the capability to apply “tags” to the content.

by Going...going...

I initiated my love affair with The Economist at age 26, receiving the flimsy-paper airmail edition weekly when the definite article was the capitalized and part of its calling. It followed me in working stints in Chile, Brazil, and El Salvador. For me, the inventor of the “Big Mac Index of Currency Exchange Rates” represented the greatest English language news journal and the best source for world news(given McDonald’s closing its 850 stores in Russia, it leaves the Index in a bit of a bind, or does it switch to the cost of a liter of bottled water with the standard quart augmented by a 1.06 factor?), which kept me well rounded and which I relished. And now, some sixty years later, I feel the same way. Bravo Economist!

by Mitzi0666

I may be disabled from health issues. In the past couple years, I may have had to walk away from my CPA Firm I worked so hard to build, but my brain still wants to learn... just on its own timeline.

The Economist App provides that for me... and how ever my body needs to take it in!! Days when my eyes struggle or concentration is tough due to pain, I can put in my AirPods and immerse into learning about the economic world via listening! If I can’t take in full articles, the morning briefings are perfect.

Best if all, it gives me things to think about. And the ones that are still lingering around at dinner time, provide my husband and I something intelligent to discuss and mull over. Feels as if I may still “have it” ... Thank You.

by Fiohubby

I was compelled by a recent piece on the history of Russia’s attitudes towards Ukraine to post an enthusiastic, if disappointingly thinly answered, paean to the journalists of the Economist on my Facebook page. To be able to combine history, journalism and a spot of political philosophy in such a piece, in readable and lucid format, without dumbing down or preaching, and to do this sort of thing in five or six pieces week in, week out, takes more than impressive talent. It must demand application, which is belied by the impression of effortlessness it conveys. This, my friends, is real journalism. And I don’t always agree with what it is saying (although I must confess disproportionate alignment with content on an ongoing basis). Subscribing digitally, after years of enjoying the paper version and then enduring a long absence, was a very, very good idea. I flagellate myself for not reading more. The Economist deftly assuages some of these feelings.

by Longhornchaser

I have loved TheEconomist and made it my primary means of accessing the content for more than one year now. With the latest update the audio playback seems ruined. Though the audio opens with each new issue and appears to automatically download, the playback takes several seconds, almost a minute in most cases to begin. It is almost as if the download restarts each time I open TheEconomist , and the audio files are not actually saved. Moreover the playback lasts for about half of an article, and if my screen turns off or I lock the phone, the playback and TheEconomist seem to crash. I am not sure what changed, but the stability of TheEconomist is terrible all of a sudden. Particularly with regard to the audio playback.
I do like the new arrangement and layout of the ability to access the different audio articles, but there is no point if the articles won’t play.

by Tugrul Ates

Great app overall. Putting three stars to elevate some of the issues I encountered in the new version. I’m using TheEconomist only in dark mode, if that’s helpful context. 1. Espresso is gone. Someone else mentioned here as well. 2. App state is lost too quickly. My reading style is to jump back and forth between TheEconomist and others (e.g. switch to Wikipedia mid-article and come back afterwards to resume the same article). Currently, TheEconomist cold starts into the main menu after being the background for about a minute. This is a significant annoyance for me. 3. Read-state check marks were reset locally after the update. These were great to keep track of my backlog in recent few weekly issues. If this is a one time thing, probably I can bear the disturbance however. 4. Read-state check marks are less visible (in dark mode) on the weekly tab compared to v2. This makes it harder to find unread articles in weekly issues. 5. Articles in daily view has advertisement boxes with no advertisements in them. They show empty gray space. While I’m here, I also would like to see the read-state synced to my account server-side. Having them local only is the only reason I read the Economist on just one device, and not iPad and phone together for instance. I hope this is helpful! Thank you for the great app the dev team! i

by Qp360

First, let me say the Economist is generally my favorite news source. However, I recently started listening to the audio version of the weekly content using TheEconomist . The player is very glitchy, failing to load sections, stopping unexpectedly, losing my place and playing chapters other than those I’ve selected.

I have to say the audio quality is also not great at 2x, my preferred listening speed. I have previously listened for years to the full weekly audio using podcast apps, and they handled the audio in a much cleaner way. (I would still be using them, but the links have recently become inaccessible to me and maybe others.)

Economist team, I’d love some work on the audio interface! Thank you!

by Jhfddvhjufggfff

I love The Economist, but their app suffers from a number of issues:

1. Even after logging in with a paid subscription, TheEconomist demands that you subscribe via a pop-up at the bottom and a permanent link at the top.

2. It logs you out frequently and doesn’t readily accept your information when you log back in.

3. There are minor glitches.

4. There is no search function for articles and so it is an ordeal to go back beyond the current issue to find things of interest, which is extremely annoying and contrary to other media app common practices.

5. When clicking on The Economist articles in social media, it has to jump through Safari and then TheEconomist , which takes a few seconds, and sometimes you get stuck in Safari where it pretends you are not a subscriber and... demands that you subscribe before showing you the article that you have paid good money for.

6. The overall layout of TheEconomist is not extremely well designed, which requires a lot of clicking to get around and allows one to easily miss even current articles (much less historical articles, which are extremely difficult to find). Too much graphics and repetitive links and links that aren’t relevant and not enough smooth/ seamless connections to other current or historical articles.

by Leave It Behind

This has long been one of my favorite apps. It’s recently taken a big step backwards with a feature that was released before it was ready.

TheEconomist now has a “Continue reading” notification when you return that’s designed to take you back to your last article. Unfortunately, it isn’t smart about whether you finished your last article, so it’s essentially “Here’s what you were reading last” which isn’t helpful at all. An even more basic bug is if the last screen you were on was the quote at the end of the morning briefing, it will actually suggest you “continue reading” that brief sentence.

Related, articles gain a check mark when you complete them. That feature is similarly flawed as just viewing an article and bookmarking it without any scrolling will add the check mark.

FWIW, I have no interest in the Continue Reading feature even if it worked correctly and wish it was optional.

I was sure to contact support about these issues first, but haven’t seen them addressed yet.

by Heyhey11111

The old app was the gold standard for magazine apps. The functionality was perfect and let me immerse myself in each week’s magazine with no other distractions, so it felt much closer to the print version. Now the menu bar at top is always visible allowing me to click back to “this week.” I want that to go away when I scroll down/read. And it shouldn’t refer me back to “this week”—that’s a section of the magazine. It’s confusing to call the magazine part of TheEconomist that as well. Also, I never ever listen to the audio version. So why do I have to see it on each page? I just don’t get why you’d mess with perfection. I’d use the “classic” app, but apparently it doesn’t recognize my economist subscription? So frustrating.

by E1578912

While TheEconomist is better on iOS than the classic app - ability to play/pause, stories play in series even when TheEconomist isn’t open in the foreground, it is missing the feature that enables the use to jump right to the audio story they would like to listen to. One has to start the entire section, then skip the stories that they don’t want to listen to or have already heard. Additionally, it would be convenient to be able to order the sections/stories as a playlist, enabling the user to listen to the stories in the order they prefer.

by Xiao Ningchuan

TheEconomist hasn’t been super stable but mostly usable. I especially like the “streaming” feature so you don’t have to download each issue as in the other app (Classic US, I think that’s the name). Every update brought some bugs and fixed some. Considering the version number of 1.x, it is probably expected. Ever since 1.5.1, I can’t access the previous editions from my iPhone X. Would appreciate it if you could please fix this soon!

Update: there is a workaround to get the previous editions back. You have to delete TheEconomist and then reinstall it. But it really shouldn’t be like this way.

by Dbseoul

I’d like to just hit ‘play’ on the bookmarked articles with audio and keep working through my list as I’m walking or driving. TheEconomist is missing a way to just play audio from my bookmarked articles without having to go back and hit ‘play’ on the next bookmarked article. After it plays my first bookmarked article, it plays an unrelated ‘Leaders’ article, which is a bit unexpected.

But I still love TheEconomist and am happy with my subscription. The Economist is truly my most interesting news publication. It often helps me understand the world in a slightly different way.

by Don Pedro 1492

I’ve been a subscriber to this wonderful magazine for the past 40 years...and it only gets better with age. Why? For example, because now I can listen each week to the contents of the entire magazine via the audio download that’s wonderfully read so I can jog or walk my little dog while enriching my mind with the best written articles about politics, economics, business and finance. I also appreciate the magazine’s classically liberal, open, progressive, free enterprise viewpoint.

by Heiva Kelley

I chose to use TheEconomist for promising features, most importantly for me, the ability to see which articles I’ve read. Despite many glitches, this feature has worked ok, until yesterday when I lost all check marks at the bottom of articles I’ve read. This is incredibly frustrating because I am always working off of several issues at once as I try to completely read past issues, keep up with daily read, and read the time-relevant updates from new issues. Please fix this and I’ll change my rating to 5-stars.

by Mindi Beth

I get the magazine subscription and always get it on Saturdays. I’m out to greet the mailman when it comes! It’s the highlight of my weekend! I can’t find anything else with articles so in depth, well written, which also focuses on world events and has a more unbiased viewpoint than most periodicals. I usually read the magazine cover to cover within a few hours. I also love the charts and graphs that accompany the articles. Thank you for the amazing writing by intellectual writers!

by JeroenBours

Many years ago I picked up The Economist at a dentist office started reading it and instantly forgot the drilling noise, audible inside the waiting room. Haven’t put it down since. TheEconomist makes it even easier to continue reading common sense, and to-the-point journalism. There’s little left of this kind of reporting, analyzing and unbiased editing. I am a creative in design and advertising, yet it’s The Economist that makes me smarter in meetings with executives from all kinds of industries. There, The Economist has been my little secret over the years.

by Woody_15

(NB: I am and have long been a big fan of the content from the Economist. This review concerns only the apps from this publication, specifically on iPad)

When the Economist recently (I think back in 2017) “updated” their app, moving from paginated articles to more trendy, endlessly scrolling articles, I thought it was a huge step in the wrong direction. It looked like a cheap, generic app, with many bugs and shoddy UI. For instance, there was no way to jump to another section in one week’s issue, and bookmarking was confusing.

I still miss pagination on iPad (call me old fashioned but I think this is the best way to present magazine articles), but this new app version is a vast improvement. Better look, better UI, easy bookmarks that sync between iPad and iPhone. Jump to sections easily. Daily content in addition to the weekly issues. Easy audio downloads.

With that said, I highly recommend TheEconomist.

by Dom B L

SIR- The new app is simply excellent. The rewrite has succeeded in transforming TheEconomist from a digital version of the weekly newspaper into a full fledged source of news, catering not only to the times I feel like reading in-depth analysis from the issue’s front to back. The linked articles at the end of each article allow me to wander around and read based on topic even if the linked articles are from a previous issue. The in-built espresso function is also appreciated, creating another mode of news consumption that will again serve as a jumping off point to further reading.
Dom
Some Guy,
Austin

by CMH37

The thing I love most about TheEconomist is that each of the articles is paired with a voice recording of it. It’s a great way to read it an Economist article, which tends to be dense and long. Somehow having somebody read it to me makes it more accessible and enjoyable. I also really love The Economist. The articles give me a far-reaching understanding of what’s happening in the world. Contrast this to the myopic news we get in our daily newspaper.