Digest : Improved listening and reading experience for The Economist
Since I was in college, I have been an avid reader of The Economist. I read (and listen) to it cover to cover every week, and essentially have a set schedule for it through the week to ensure I get through it, and keep time for additional reading.
However, over the past couple of years, The Economist has made it more and more difficult to consume the content in a flexible manner. Examples include an increasingly poor reading and user experience when accessing The Economist digitally through its app, removing access to its RSS feeds making it difficult to listen to The Economist through podcasting apps, and deprioritizing physical delivery (my physical copy now arrives two days later than it did a couple of years ago) forcing users to spend more time consuming the content digitally.
I suspect all of these steps are to force users to consume The Economist through its app and website which allows data collection and analytics, and potential opportunities for monetizing that data. While this enshittification of the experience may benefit The Economist in the short term, it makes it more and more difficult for the reader to just read the content they are paying for.
Well, after one too many times of having The Economist digital app wiping my reading position after switching away from the app, I decided to see if I could make a better way to consume the content (that I am paying for). The result of that is Digest, a script that creates an optimized experience for reading and listening to The Economist.
Digest is an open source project written in Python that creates a local, standalone experience for reading The Economist. It requires that you already have access to The Economist content (most likely through a paid subscription). It creates a local version of the weekly magazine with an optimized reading experience that can be used for reading, accessing via podcast apps, or as source material to query and reference the weekly edition via AI models such as ChatGPT.
You can access the project from the Digest Github Project page.
The script has a number of features
- Creates a local archive of the weekly magazine / edition
- Provides a optimized reading experience
- Support for core article content, images and audio
- Easily navigate between sections and articles
- Ability to read offline
- Reading is HTML based, so you can choose your reading client
- Quickly jump to source articles on The Economist website
- Generates an RSS feed for audio content that can be used to listen to weekly edition as a podcast in your favorite podcast client
- Ability to sync and listen to the audio podcast offline
- Support for article summary generation via LLMs and Ollama
I have been using this as the primary way to read and listen to The Economist over the past couple of weeks, and I can’t imagine going back to the app.
Desktop
Mobile
Podcast
If you run into any issues, have suggestions, or want to make some changes, just leave a comment on the project site, or ping me directly.
