The good thing about Financial Times: It is a UK publisher, not US-based, so the reporting on the US is more skeptical and nuanced. Less screechy. To be fair, I avoid almost all of the opinion pieces except for Martin Wolf, because he is basically writing an economics column. The rest is rather inflammatory (much lower editorial standards!) and can can readily be skipped.
Also consider the free FT AlphaVille which is a blog attached to FT. Much more casual reporting style, but they have cracked some big cases, including Dan Mccrum's year-long (later explosive) investigation into Wirecard.
I'd stay far away from the Spiegel. While it has the reputation of a liberal magazine it actually started off as the mouthpiece of the BND. For some weird reason it got that reputation when it attacked Adenauer's policies when he and de Gaulle were working on bringing Germany and France closer together. While it somehow has retained this intellectual status to a lot of people it is an outrageous publication, with much better marketing than it has content. It has also hired more and more leadership from tabloids.
I'd look into Swiss or French publications. Although most of the French media has also unfortunately been pretty streamlined.
I second this.
It’s mind boggling how bad DER SPEGEL does basic research.
I did not find it surprising at all, that the Relotius-scandal^1 happened at DER SPIEGEL.
... and was caught by Der Spiegel! From Wikipedia: "On 19 December 2018, Der Spiegel made public that Relotius had admitted that he had "falsified his articles on a grand scale", inventing facts, persons and quotations in at least 14 of his stories in Der Spiegel, an event now being referred to as Spiegelgate. The magazine uncovered the fraud after a co-author of one of Relotius's articles about a pro-Trump vigilante group in Arizona conducting patrols along the Mexico–United States border, the Spanish-born Spiegel journalist Juan Moreno, became suspicious of the veracity of Relotius's contributions and gathered evidence against him."
Wow, thanks for pointing out the international Spiegel.
It seems much more substantial than the free German counterpart, at least in my first impression.
I thought of one more: How about The New Yorker? Yes, about 25-50% is dedicated to NYC, but the rest is incredibly varied and insanely well fact-checked. You won't find as much economic news, but you will find more science, arts, and long form profiles.
The Economist tends to favor the US because the Economist supports liberal democracy and free trade worldwide. The Unites States is the only country who can and does defend those values. Europe cannot arm Ukraine against Putin. Japan cannot dispute China's claims rights to Taiwan or the ocean.
The good thing about Financial Times: It is a UK publisher, not US-based, so the reporting on the US is more skeptical and nuanced. Less screechy. To be fair, I avoid almost all of the opinion pieces except for Martin Wolf, because he is basically writing an economics column. The rest is rather inflammatory (much lower editorial standards!) and can can readily be skipped.
Also consider the free FT AlphaVille which is a blog attached to FT. Much more casual reporting style, but they have cracked some big cases, including Dan Mccrum's year-long (later explosive) investigation into Wirecard.