Well, it's on a website. Imagine opening the website and reading the start of the article:
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Title: Sex and the single black woman
Subtitle: How the mass incarceration of black men hurts black women
IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called "The Logic of Life". With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she "steals" a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.
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If this were a local newspaper, then it would be fine. But for something on the internet, it's not at all clear what is meant. A magazine which writes for the internet has to be more specific when it speaks about regional problems, so that it's clear that this does not affect other people.
The opening paragraphs speaks about the world and about the british, so it could very well be a world-wide phenomena.
Journalism is now global, and appropriate care has to be taken, in my opinion.
Yeah, this is a general feature of how The Economist writes. Sometimes, as an American, it's a bit jarring to open to a random page and start reading an article that launches right into a discussion of some current event in the UK without even pointing out, "hey this is a thing happening in the UK". But when it's in the UK section, they just write assuming you already have that context, and often that you are even up to date on ongoing issues (e.g. they don't explain who David Cameron is in every single article that mentions him).
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Title: Sex and the single black woman
Subtitle: How the mass incarceration of black men hurts black women
IMAGINE that the world consists of 20 men and 20 women, all of them heterosexual and in search of a mate. Since the numbers are even, everyone can find a partner. But what happens if you take away one man? You might not think this would make much difference. You would be wrong, argues Tim Harford, a British economist, in a book called "The Logic of Life". With 20 women pursuing 19 men, one woman faces the prospect of spinsterhood. So she ups her game. Perhaps she dresses more seductively. Perhaps she makes an extra effort to be obliging. Somehow or other, she "steals" a man from one of her fellow women. That newly single woman then ups her game, too, to steal a man from someone else. A chain reaction ensues. Before long, every woman has to try harder, and every man can relax a little.
---
If this were a local newspaper, then it would be fine. But for something on the internet, it's not at all clear what is meant. A magazine which writes for the internet has to be more specific when it speaks about regional problems, so that it's clear that this does not affect other people.
The opening paragraphs speaks about the world and about the british, so it could very well be a world-wide phenomena.
Journalism is now global, and appropriate care has to be taken, in my opinion.