The Economist

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Front cover, February 21 2004 (North American edition)

The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Limited in London. Subjects typically covered include international politics, business, finance, science and technology and the arts. The publication is targeted at the high-end "prestige" segment of the market and counts among its audience influential business and government decision-makers.

Features

The Economist’s primary focus is world politics and business, but it also runs regular sections on science and technology as well as books and the arts. Every two weeks, the newspaper includes, as an additional section, an in-depth survey of a particular region or field of business.

Articles, which are often heavily opinionated, almost never carry a byline. This means that no specific person or persons can be named as the author. Not even the name of the editor (currently Bill Emmott) is printed in the issue. The author of a piece is named in certain circumstances: when notable persons are invited to contribute opinion pieces; when Economist writers compile surveys; and to highlight a potential conflict of interest over a book review. The names of Economist editors and correspondents can be located, however, via the staff pages of the website.

The newspaper has a trademark tight writing style that is famous for putting a maximum amount of information into a minimum of column inches. The one feature most articles have in common is the concluding witticism. Some have joked that as long as the writers can deliver that, their political or other opinions do not matter. The Economist publishes precisely one obituary every week, of a famous (or infamous) person from any field of endeavour.

The Economist is also famous for its Big Mac index, which uses the price of a Big Mac hamburger sold by McDonald's in different countries as an informal measure of purchasing power parity between two currencies. It has turned out to be a whimsical but surprisingly accurate index for comparison. In January 2004, this index was joined by a Starbucks "tall latte index".

The magazine is also a co-sponsor of the Copenhagen Consensus.

Each of the opinion columns in the newspaper is devoted to a particular area of interest. The names of these columns reflect the topic they concentrate on:

• Bagehot (Britain) - named for Walter Bagehot, nineteenth century British constitutional expert and early editor of The Economist.
• Charlemagne (Europe) - named for Charlemagne, founder of the Frankish Empire, an early "European Union".
• Lexington (United States) - named for Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the beginning of the American War of Independence.
• Buttonwood (finance) - named for the buttonwood tree where early Wall Street traders gathered. This is an online column.

The magazine goes to press on Thursdays, is available online from Thursday evening GMT, and is available on newsstands in selected major markets (New York City, London and Tokyo among them) the next day. It is printed in seven sites around the world.

Awards

The Ecomomist newspaper sponsors a yearly "Innovation Awards", now in six categories.

The 2004 Award for Social and Economic Innovation is Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank.

Opinions

The newspaper was first published in September 1843 by James Wilson to “take part in ‘a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.’ ” This phrase is quoted on the newpaper's contents page.

When the magazine was founded, the term "economism" denoted what would today be termed fiscal conservatism. The Economist generally takes both an economically and socially liberal (or libertarian) position disfavouring government interference in either social or economic activity, though views taken by individual contributors are quite diverse.

The magazine:

• Supports gay marriage
• Supports legal prostitution [1]
• Supports decriminalising drugs such as marijuana
• Supports reducing agricultural subsidies in developed nations
• Supports the 2003 war in Iraq
• Supports stronger gun control laws in the United States [2]
• Supports Turkey's membership in the European Union
• Opposes manned space flight as carried out by NASA

Like many newspapers, The Economist occasionally uses its pages to endorse candidates in upcoming major elections. In the past, the magazine has endorsed:

• Bill Clinton, Democrat (U.S. presidential election, 1992)
• Bob Dole, Republican (U.S. presidential election, 1996)
• Conservative Party, led by John Major (UK general election, 1997): "Labour doesn't deserve it" [3]
• George W. Bush, Republican (U.S. presidential election, 2000), after John McCain was defeated in the Republican primaries
• Michael Bloomberg, Republican (New York City mayoral election, 2001): "The Economist would shudder and pull the lever for Mr Bloomberg" [4]
• Labour Party, led by Tony Blair (UK general election, 2001): "Vote conservative" [5]
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican (2003 California recall), although the magazine was strongly opposed to the recall itself
• "Red" Ken Livingstone, Independent/Labour (London mayoral election, 2004)
• The Liberal-National coalition led by John Howard at the 2004 Australian legistlative election. It had opposed Howard's bid for a third term in 2001.

A history of The Economist by the editors of Economist.com puts it this way:

What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? "It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position." That is as true today as when Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favouring penal reform and decolonisation, as well as—more recently—gun control and gay marriage. [6]

Business

ABC circulation for the newspaper is approximately 943,721 (January 2004-June 2004 figures) with just less than half the readership based in North America, approximately 21% in continental Europe, 16% in the UK and 11% in Asia. The newspaper consciously adopts an internationalist approach and notes that over 80% of its readership is from outside the UK, its country of publication. The current editor (as at October 2004), Bill Emmott, assumed his role in 1993.

The Economist Newspaper Limited is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Economist Group. One half of The Economist Group is owned by private shareholders, and the other half by the Financial Times, a subsidiary of The Pearson Group. In 2002, the Economist Group turnover was £227m in 2002 resulting in an operating profit of £15m (down from £21m in 2001 and £32m in 1998, the decrease attributed to a sharp decline in advertising). Income streams are split roughly 50-50 between advertising and other areas, such as subscriptions.

In July 2004, The Economist Group launched an upmarket lifestyle magazine called Intelligent Life, an annual publication.

External links

• Economist.com – homepage of The Economist
• Intelligent Life – homepage of Intelligent Life
• Economist 1993 – Ruth Dudley Edwards’ retrospective on The Economist, written on the occasion of its 150th year of publication

Further reading

Edwards, Ruth Dudley. The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist 1843–1993. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993.

See also

• Newsweek
• Time magazine