The Economist
| Type | Weekly newsmagazine (in UK, a registered newspaper) |
|---|---|
| Format | Magazine |
| Owner(s) | The Economist Group |
| Editor | John Micklethwait |
| Founded | September 1843 |
| Political alignment | Economism (Libertarianism) |
| Headquarters | 25 St James's Street London GB-SW1A 1HG |
| Circulation | 1,000,000 per week |
| Website | www.economist.com |
The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Limited in London. It has been in continuous publication since September 1843. As of 2006, its average circulation topped one million copies a week, about half of which are sold in North America.
According to its contents page, its goal is to "take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." Subjects covered include international news, economics, 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.
It takes a strongly argued editorial stance on many issues, especially support for free trade and fiscal conservatism; it thus practises advocacy journalism.
The Economist calls itself a newspaper. This reflects its legal status under longstanding company registration laws in its home territory, England. Unlike most newspapers it is printed in magazine form on glossy paper, like a newsmagazine.
The Economist belongs to The Economist Group. The publication interests of the group include the CFO brand family as well as European Voice [1] and Roll Call [2] (known as "the Newspaper of Capitol Hill"). Another part of the group is The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) , a research and advisory company providing country, industry and management analysis worldwide.
Features
The Economist's primary focus is world news, 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 business issue, business sector or geographical region.
Articles often take a definite editorial stance and 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 (from 2006, John Micklethwait) is printed in the issue. It is a longstanding tradition that an editor's only signed article during his tenure is written on the occasion of his departure from the position. 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 [3] 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. Since 1995, The Economist has published one obituary every week, of a famous (or infamous) person from any field of endeavour.
The Economist is 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 newspaper 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.
Two other regular columns are:
- Face Value: about prominent people in the business world
- Economic Focus: a general economics column frequently based on academic research
The magazine goes to press on Thursdays, is available online from Thursday evening GMT, and is available on newsstands in many countries the next day. It is printed in seven sites around the world.
The Economist newspaper sponsors yearly "Innovation Awards", now in seven categories.
History
The August 5, 1843 prospectus for the newspaper[4], enumerated thirteen areas of coverage that its editors wanted the newspaper to focus on:
- Original leading articles, in which free-trade principles will be most rigidly applied to all the important questions of the day.
- Articles relating to some practical, commercial, agricultural, or foreign topic of passing interest, such as foreign treaties.
- An article on the elementary principles of political economy, applied to practical experience, covering the laws related to prices, wages, rent, exchange, revenue, and taxes.
- Parliamentary reports, with particular focus on commerce, agriculture, and free trade.
- Reports and accounts of popular movements advocating free trade.
- General news from the Court, the Metropolis, the Provinces, Scotland, and Ireland.
- Commercial topics such as changes in fiscal regulations, the state and prospects of the markets, imports and exports, foreign news, the state of the manufacturing districts, notices of important new mechanical improvements, shipping news, the money market, and the progress of railways and public companies.
- Agricultural topics, including the application of geology and chemistry; notices of new and improved implements, state of crops, markets, prices, foreign markets and prices converted into English money; from time to time, in some detail, the plans pursued in Belgium, Switzerland, and other well-cultivated countries.
- Colonial and foreign topics, including trade, produce, political and fiscal changes, and other matters, including exposés on the evils of restriction and protection, and the advantages of free intercourse and trade.
- Law reports, confined chiefly to areas important to commerce, manufacturing, and agriculture.
- Books, confined chiefly, but not so exclusively, to commerce, manufacturing, and agriculture, and including all treatises on political economy, finance, or taxation.
- A commercial gazette, with prices and statistics of the week.
- Correspondence and inquiries from the newspaper's readers.
In 1845 during Railway Mania, The Economist changed its name to The Economist, Weekly Commercial Times, Bankers' Gazette, and Railway Monitor. A Political, Literary and General Newspaper.[5]
Editors
The newspaper was first edited by James Wilson. Herbert Spencer was editor from 1848 to 1853. Wilson's son-in-law, Walter Bagehot, was editor from 1860 to his death in 1877.
Since 1938, the editors of the Economist have been:
- John Micklethwait, 2006—present
- Bill Emmott, 1993—2006
- Rupert Pennant-Rea, 1986—1993
- Andrew Knight, 1974—1986
- Alistair Burnett, 1965—1974
- Donald Tyerman, 1956—1965
- Geoffrey Crowther, 1938—1956
Opinions
Main article: The Economist editorial stance
When the newspaper was founded, the term “economism” denoted what would today be termed fiscal conservatism. The Economist generally supports economic liberalism, that is it supports free markets, and opposes socialism. It is in favour of globalisation. Economic liberalism is generally associated with the right, especially outside the United States, but is now favoured by some traditionally left-wing parties. It also supports social liberalism, which is often seen as left-wing, especially in the United States. This contrast derives in part from The Economist's roots in classical liberalism, disfavouring government interference in either social or economic activity. According to former editor Bill Emmott "The Economist's philosophy has always been liberal, not conservative"[6]. In modern American terms its stance has traces of libertarianism. However, the views taken by individual contributors are quite diverse.
Business
Circulation for the newspaper, audited by Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), was 1,038,552 for the first half of 2005. [7]. Sales inside North America were 51 per cent of the total, with sales in the UK making up 15 per cent of the total and continental Europe 20 per cent. The Economist claims sales, both by subscription and on newstands, in 201 countries.
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 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. The editorial independence of The Economist is strictly upheld. An independent trust board, which has power to block any changes of the editor, exists to ensure this.
Letters
The Economist frequently receives letters from senior businesspeople, politicians and spokespeople for government departments, Non-Governmental Organisations and pressure-groups. While well-written or witty responses from anyone will be considered, controversial issues will frequently produce a torrent of letters. For example, the survey of Corporate Social Responsibility, published January 2005, produced largely critical letters from Oxfam, the UN World Food Programme, UN Global Compact, the Chairman of BT, an ex-Director of Shell and the UK Institute of Directors.
Censorship of The Economist
Sections of The Economist criticising authoritarian regimes, such as China, are frequently removed from the newspaper by the authorities in those countries. Nelson Mandela stated that he used to receive The Economist while imprisoned in South Africa until the authorities there realised that it was not restricted to covering economic issues and was taking a very strong line against the apartheid regime. The government of Saudi Arabia (among others) censors the magazine, which often appears on newsstands with missing pages. Some issues (such as one covering King Fahd's death in 2005) were banned from the kingdom. Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe went further, and imprisoned The Economist's correspondent there, charging him with violating an infamous statute against "publishing untruth".
The Economist has frequently criticised figures and countries deemed corrupt. In recent years, for example, it has been critical of Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister (who dubbed it The Ecommunist [8]); Laurent Kabila, the late president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Robert Mugabe, the head of government in Zimbabwe. The Economist also called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation after the emergence of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. Although The Economist supported George W. Bush's election campaign in 2000 and vocally supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the editors backed John Kerry in the 2004 election and the editorial tone has since become increasingly critical of the Bush administration due to its general disagreement with the paper's classical liberalism.
Additional Information about The Economist
The corporate logotype of The Economist has evolved from the gothic lettering used on the cover of the first issue, published in 1843, to the box device designed in 1959 by Reynolds Stone, a British engraver and typographer. It now incorporates a font from The Economist Typefamily, a typeface created specifically for The Economist's use.
The Economist has used a specially designed family of typefaces since May 1991. Development work focused specifically on how the new type family would respond to electronic transmission and different printing conditions at The Economist’s seven international production sites. In The Economist’srecent re-design a new typeface, Officina, was introduced for cover headlines and all navigational information. Ecotype, The Economist’s main typeface, was also redrawn to make it easier to read.
Further reading
- Edwards, Ruth Dudley. The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist 1843–1993. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1993.
See also
External links
- Economist.com homepage of The Economist
- an article on the vocabulary of The Economist editorials
- The Economist Group website providing group information and links to all group publications such as CFO, Roll Call and European Voice
- Economist 1993 Ruth Dudley Edwards’ retrospective on The Economist, written on the occasion of its 150th year of publication
- ebusinessforum Part of the Economist Intelligence Unit. Has free articles from The Economist