The Economist
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The Economist is a weekly news and international affairs publication of The Economist Newspaper Ltd edited in London, UK. 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, but not sports (though articles about the business of sports are occasionally published). 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 its support for free trade and fiscal conservatism; it thus practises advocacy journalism.
The Economist calls itself a newspaper. This reflects its legal status under long-standing 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 [link] and Roll Call (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. Every three months, The Economist publishes a quarterly technology survey.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 [link] that is famous for putting a maximum amount of information into a minimum of column inches. 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.
- 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.
- Face Value: about prominent people in the business world
- Economic Focus: a general economics column frequently based on academic research
The Economist newspaper sponsors yearly "Innovation Awards", in the categories of bioscience, computing and communications, energy and the environment, social and economic innovation, business-process innovation, consumer products, and a special “no boundaries” category.
The Economist also produces the annual The World in [Year] publication.
History
- 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.
Editors
The editors of the Economist have been:- James Wilson 1843—1857 (Herbert Spencer was sub-editor from 1848 to 1853)
- Richard Hold Hutton 1857—1861
- Walter Bagehot, 1861—1877. He was Wilson's son-in-law
- Daniel Conner Lathbury, 1877—1881
- R.H.I Palgrave, 1877—1883
- Edward Johnstone, 1883—1907
- F.W. Hirst, 1907—1916
- Hartley Withers, 1916—1921
- Sir Walter T. Layton, 1922—1938
- Geoffrey Crowther, 1938—1956
- Donald Tyerman, 1956—1965
- Alistair Burnet, 1965—1974
- Andrew Knight, 1974—1986
- Rupert Pennant-Rea, 1986—1993
- Bill Emmott, 1993—2006
- John Micklethwait, 2006—present
Opinions
When the newspaper was founded, the term "economism" denoted what would today be termed fiscal conservatism in the United States, or economic liberalism in the rest of the world (and historically in the United States as well). The Economist generally supports free markets, and opposes socialism. It is in favour of globalisation. Economic liberalism is generally associated with the right, 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"[link] (this meant in the non-modern-American senses of those terms). However, the views taken by individual contributors are quite diverse.
The Economist has endorsed both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party in recent British elections, and both Republican and Democratic candidates in the United States.
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 former Economist editor Geoffrey 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. [link]
Tone and voice
The Economist does not print by-lines identifying the authors of articles. In their own words: "It is written anonymously, because it is a paper whose collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists." [link]The editorial staff enforces a strictly uniform voice throughout the magazine. [link] As a result, most articles read as though they were written by a single author, displaying dry, understated wit, and precise [link] use of language. [link]
It does not explain terms like invisible hand, macroeconomics, or demand curve, and may take just six or seven words to explain the theory of comparative advantage. The newspaper usually does not translate short French quotes or phrases, and sentences in Ancient Greek or Latin are not uncommon. Even phrases in languages as obscure as Basque have been included, relying on the above-average intelligence of its readers to glean meaning.
It strives to be well-rounded. As well as financial and economic issues, it reports on science, culture, language, literature, and art, and is careful to hire writers and editors who are well-versed in these subjects.
The publication is not without a sense of whimsy. Most articles conclude with a witticism; some have joked that as long as the writers can deliver that, their political opinions are irrelevant. Image captions are almost always humorous. The Letters section usually concludes with an odd or light-hearted letter. One notable example simply asked, "What is the idiot's corner, and how can I get published there?"
Business
Circulation for the newspaper, audited by Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), was 1,038,552 for the first half of 2005. [link]. 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, including members of the Rothschild banking family of England, 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. Despite having its Asia-Pacific office there, The Economist regularly has difficulties with the Lee dynasty in Singapore, having been sued successfully by them for libel on a number of occasions.
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. In June 15, 2006 Iran banned the sale of The Economist due to a map incorrectly labling the Persian Gulf as the 'Gulf' [link]. Iran's action can be put into context within the larger issue of the Persian Gulf naming dispute.
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. Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe went further, and imprisoned Andrew Meldrum, The Economist's correspondent there. The government charged him with violating an infamous statute against "publishing untruth" for writing that woman was decapitated by Mugabe supporters. The decapitation claim was retracted and allegedly fabricated by the woman's husband. The correspondent was later acquitted, only to receive a deportation order.
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
- *[Preliminary number and prospectus, Aug. 5th 1843]
- [Some issues from the inaugural volume in 1843], hosted at ibiblio (copyright expired)
- [How The Economist made a million] Christopher Collins, The Economist's international circulation director, explains how the magazine achieved 1 million subscribers
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