Last week I posted about how the Economist has anonymous authors. I touched upon why I like this approach, how it “allows many writers to speak with a collective voice” and stems from a “belief that what is written is more important than who writes it.”
A few of you shared some interesting reflections, so I’m sharing them here to spark a conversation.
Andrew disagreed. He felt anonymity simply reduces accountability of the Economist’s writers, and that’s a bad thing overall. Furthermore, because the Economist articles are mostly opinion pieces, it’s important to understand the biases and perspectives of the writers. Finally, and ironically, he points out that a number of the Economist writers end up sharing and promoting their articles on Twitter anyway.
I see where Andrew is coming from, but I also wonder if the lack of individual accountability is offset by having more than one person contributing to a story?
Harry replied in support by saying “we live in an age where shooting the messenger has become par for the course,” so there is a benefit to “having robust debates internally, but presenting findings behind a united front.”
Overall, I’ve made some updates to my mental model based on their ideas. I’m now treating each Economist article as an opinion piece, and I read with the expectation that some amount of internal debate happens, but I’m not assuming it always happens. This allows me to bring a healthy skepticism to each reading.
Feel free to fire back any thoughts you have!