The Economist’s ‘World in 2014’ Gala

HK Magazine: What is the function of having a “The World in…” issue every year?
Tim Pinnegar: First of all, it lets us run the gala dinners, and that’s a chance to bring The Economist to life and let people meet the journalists. “The World in 2014” event this year will have Daniel Franklin in attendance, who is the executive editor of The Economist and editor of “The World In…” I also think “The World In…” sums up what The Economist does very well, which is looking to the future. A lot of magazines produce an annual about what happened that year, but we all know what’s happened in 2013. What we do in November is concise, covers the whole globe, and there’s an element of tongue-in-cheek to it, too. I think that for the past few years we’ve predicted that Fidel Castro wouldn’t be with us, but he seems to keep hanging on.

HK: Can you think back to any predictions from past years that seem either eerily prescient, or hilariously off-base?
TP: I chatted with Daniel Franklin, and he says that “The World in 2001” was a pretty strong contender for our best set of predictions. We identified Afghanistan as the “world’s worst country,” and predicted the wider threat of Osama bin Laden before the September 11th, 2001 attacks. As for the worst—our failure to predict the global financial crisis. In “The World in 2009,” the piece on what we got right and wrong in the previous year had the title: “About 2008: sorry.”

HK: The President of Mongolia will be speaking. Was there a reason to go to him in particular?
TP: Mongolia—which last year had the world’s highest GDP increase—is a country that perhaps has not had a lot of interest come its way. But that mindset is shifting, given its natural resources and its relationship with China. Sure, we could trot out all the finance ministers in the western world, but you see them a lot. Their faces are often on the news and in the paper. The thinking was that Mongolia is an of-interest country that people might not know a lot about, and we thought it would be unique to get an opinion from the president of that country.

HK: When The Economist makes an editorial statement on a major issue like a war, who gets the final decision?
TP: Every Monday morning at 11 o’clock, all of the journalists in our London office squeeze into the editor’s room—people sitting on chairs, desks, the floor—and they have a very vigorous debate about what issues and stories are important enough to be in the next magazine. Where required, they discuss their own viewpoints and how we’re going to report on that story. Things like elections and wars lead to more vigorous discussions, but ultimately it will come to a consensus. It’s quite collaborative, which is one of the reasons we don’t have bylines in our magazine. Someone writes a piece in Singapore and that goes to an Asian editor, but it’s also open for other people to look at and edit.

HK: What is it that The Economist does today that sets it apart from competitors?
TP: There is a lot of content out there, but I think what The Economist does each week is simplify. We take all of that information and put it into a weekly package of maybe 70 stories that we think you need to know and read about.

HK: What prediction would you personally make for 2014?
TP: If you want one, I’d say that England won’t win the World Cup. But anyone could make that prediction. More to the Asian focus, I think there is a worry around China both economically and socially. Increasingly, you’ve got Japan and China becoming more nationalist, and many countries try to create foreign bogeymen to try to take the heat off their back when they have domestic troubles. We might see some increase in tensions in the region and maybe more issues over islands, though I’m not sure that it’ll lead to war.