I don't really have a problem with people publishing articles about how Esperanto is doomed.

... it is better than the US press, which ignores Esperanto entirely. Even an article such as this one gets the word "Esperanto" out there and gets people thinking about language issues in general (an entirely field of study that is totally ignored by most people!)

However I think Esperanto speakers sometimes do themselves a disservice through the comments. For every clever and astute comment by an Esperanto speaker on such an article, there are usually five "Esperanto changed my life and you should learn it" comments. Esperanto speakers would do well, when commenting on such an article, to actually comment on the content of the article, rather than giving a boilerplate paragraph of "Esperanto is so wonderful and it changed my life".

We perhaps don't see it ourselves. But to pick a different topic, let's imagine someone wrote an article on Pastafarianism* and how the religion is doomed to disappear and numbers of adherents are declining, and there are a ton of comments saying "Pastafarianism changed my life and I am so glad I became a Pastafarian because everything is so much better when you follow this religion", these comments are not actually useful. They contribute to no one's understanding of the article, they don't respond to the article's arguments (which may not even be accurate), and they may even reinforce a negative view of Pastafarianism, because the people who believe in it seem like weird cult members, particularly since it looks like they didn't even read the article before responding.

* I picked Pastafarianism randomly as a non-controversial topic; feel free to substitute any other topic, religion, political party, or group on the planet

Indeed, most Americans have never heard of Esperanto. I don't think that the US press ignores it deliberately - it is just not a subject that anyone here knows anything about. On the one hand that is a disadvantage. But looking at it more positively, it gives us a playing field to start with where we could avoid all of the mistakes made elsewhere. Maybe this is where we should start.
Dennis Keefe suggests that we organize "language fairs" during which various languages are presented. And of course, our beloved language would be one of them. He offered 20-30 min mini-lessons in China and got a lot of good feedback and found people willing to study E - to that point that he organized Esperanto-Insulo in Hunan province with resounding success. I wish that Dennis were on here to help discuss this. He points to a great way to go, I think.
As for the British articles, I am looking for a good Greek expression that means decolonizationphobia.

I am completely in agreement with erinja.

That article wasn't the first article posted at that "The Economist" blog that touched upon Esperanto. Either this spring or last year (I can't remember which) the blog owner posted a poll asking people "What is the language you should learn next?" (or something close to that).

Before I arrived at the poll, someone had complained to the blog owner that they had left Esperanto off the list. So, OK sure ha ha I'll include it what the heck.

Esperanto didn't just win the poll, it was more like a military-dictatorship style election blowout. Esperanto got well over 5000 votes. The second place winner (Spanish, I think, although I don't really remember) I don't think even broke 500. And the comment thread was buried under a slew of posts just like erinja mentioned, which, as it turns out, makes for a really boring comment thread and therefore one a lot of people likely skipped.

The 10-1 victory over the next favorite language didn't make Esperanto look good. Instead, it looked like someone had announced the poll at Lernu, Ipernity, and no doubt a few other places, and the Esperantists, like the good little cultists they appeared to be, came out in force. And since the vast majority of the comments by the Esperantists were essentially the same, content-free "Learn Esperanto, it's good!" type posts, the main impression I think it left in the minds of the non-Esperanto speaking majority of regular readers was not how good Esperanto was, but more along the lines of "Yikes! The Esperanto Zombie Horde is looking for more brains!" A 10-1 victory like that doesn't impress people, it makes them think the number isn't representative of the population as a whole and therefore can be ignored.

Artificial victories are net losses.

So, when I saw the September article, I didn't announce it anywhere. I expected someone would, but it wouldn't be me. I was hopeful that the Zombie Horde would not, in fact, descend once again and overwhelm the thread with the usual noise (although for whatever it's worth I did contribute, myself, to the comment thread). Numbers aren't always everything. As erinja said, there's no problem, really, with articles about how doomed Esperanto is, either. At least those articles put it in front of people, and kind of imply to them that, while Esperanto might not be a big deal now, it really kind of was a big deal at one time. "Little deals" don't tend to inspire articles about what a failure they are. That may be enough to actually interest some people in it. Never underestimate the appeal of the underdog.