"a severe contrast between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress."

I named the blog "an informed year" because I thought it had some aesthetic appeal. I realized this afternoon that it seems to imply some special reverence for The Economist as a news source. Is that deserved? In the wake of Sarah Palin's brainfart in naming her trusted news sources, her grand inquisitor Katie Couric named The Economist as a newspaper people lie about reading. One of the orange guys in this clip from Chris Matthew's Hardball also mentions the newspaper as a source that "everyone lies about reading". I wonder if Couric and Orange Guy #2 think Lindsay Lohan is lying when she says she reads The Economist...

Why would anyone lie about reading a newspaper? Presumably because they want to appear better informed than they are. But what's special about The Economist? It's a niche magazine, targeted at the well-educated with punny ad-slogans (my favs: "great minds like a think," "the head of British intelligence," "is it a superiority complex if you are?"). According to demographics published by NPR's Morning Edition in 2006 (transcript found here), two-thirds of its readership earn more than $100,000 a year.  Why?

Until a few years ago, The Economist suffered from a lack of brand awareness in the United States.  The marketing campaign in Baltimore (see 2006 New York Times article) aimed to use the caliber of their current readership to carve out a brand: the newspaper of the powerful and important.  The Economist would like it if their magazine was seen as a enabler of success, rather than just a source read by the successful.  Do people of my income bracket (way less than a third of $100k) consider reading The Economist a matter of getting on the intellectual level of the elites?  The New Republic's Andrew Sullivan showers no praises on the magazine or its well-earning readers, saying "it's a kind of Reader’s Digest for the overclass". Sure, that's The New Republic saying that, but even still...

So again, does The Economist deserve its esteem? It's an open question that I'm nowhere near ready to answer. You can expect for me to get back to it through the course of this project. But in the meantime, tell me what you think is the common perception of the paper. I won't be looking down my nose at you, honest.