The Economist Totally Explained

Everything about The Economist totally explained

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd and edited in London. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843. While The Economist calls itself a "newspaper" (and refers to its journalists as "correspondents"), each issue appears on glossy paper, like a newsmagazine. In 2007, it reported an average circulation of just over 1.3 million copies per issue, about half of which are sold in North America. The Economist claims it "is not a chronicle of economics." Rather, it aims "to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress." It practices advocacy journalism in taking an editorial stance based on free trade and globalisation. It targets educated readers and boasts that its audience contains influential executives and policy-makers.
The "newspaper" belongs to The Economist Group, half of which is owned by the Financial Times, a subsidiary of Pearson PLC. A group of independent shareholders, including many members of the staff and the Rothschild banking family of England, owns the rest. A board of trustees formally appoints the editor, who can't be removed without their permission. In addition, about two-thirds of the seventy-five staff are based in London, despite the global emphasis.

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" adds an in-depth special report on a particular issue, business sector or geographical region. Every three months, it publishes a technology report called Technology Quarterly or TQ.
   Articles often take a definite editorial stance and almost never carry a byline. 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 special reports; 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 media directory pages of the website.
   The "newspaper" boasts a tight writing style that seeks to include the maximum amount of information in a limited space. Atlantic Monthly publisher David G. Bradley described the formula as "a consistent world view expressed, consistently, in tight and engaging prose."
   Since 1995, The Economist has published one obituary every week, of a significant person, not necessarily famous, from any field of endeavour. In addition, The Economist is known 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 the purchasing power of currencies. While whimsical, exchange rates in Western countries have been more likely to adjust to the Big Mac index than vice-versa.
   The "newspaper" includes several opinion columns, whose names 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. Until September 2006 this was available only as an online column, but it's now included in the print edition.

Two other regular columns are:

Face Value: about prominent people in the business world.

Economics Focus: a general economics column, frequently based on academic research. The magazine goes to press on Thursdays, is available online from Thursday between 6 and 7pm GMT, and is available on newsstands in many countries the next day. It is printed at seven sites around the world. The Economist also produces the annual The World in [Year] publication. In addition, it 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. It also sponsors a writing award.

History

The August 5, 1843 prospectus for the "newspaper," 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.

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, globalisation, and free immigration, has been described as neo-liberal . It also supports social liberalism, including legalized drugs and prostitution. This contrast derives in part from The Economist's roots in classical liberalism, disfavoring government interference in either social or economic activity. According to former editor Bill Emmott, "the Economist's philosophy has always been liberal, not conservative." Individual contributors take diverse views. 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. Economist.com puts its stance 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.

The Economist frequently accuses figures and countries of corruption or dishonesty. In recent years, for example, it criticized World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's Prime Minister (who dubbed it The Ecommunist); Laurent Kabila, the late president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Robert Mugabe, the head of government in Zimbabwe and, recently, Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina. The Economist also called for Bill Clinton's impeachment and later for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation after the emergence of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse. The Economist initially was a vocal supporter for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, but it has since called the operation "bungled from the start" and criticized the "almost criminal negligence" of the Bush Administration’s handling of the war, while maintaining, as of April 2008, that pulling out in the short term would be irresponsible. In the 2004 U.S. election, the editors backed John Kerry. The paper has also supported some left-wing issues such as progressive taxation, criticizing the U.S. tax model in a recent issue, and seems to support some government regulation on health issues, such as smoking in public areas. The Economist consistently favors guest worker programs and amnesties, especially in 2006 when one article was titled "Sense not Sensenbrenner." It published an "obituary" of God in the last issue of 1999.

Tone and voice

The Economist doesn't print by-lines identifying the authors of articles other than surveys and special "by invitation" contribution. The editors say this is necessarily because "collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists." Authors refer to themselves within articles as "your correspondent." The newspaper allows a rare exception to prevent conflicts of interest (such as when reviewing a book written by an Economist staffer. In addition, retiring editors are permitted a signed farewell article.
The editorial staff enforces a uniform voice throughout its pages, as if most articles were written by a single author, displaying dry, understated wit, and precise use of language. The paper's treatment of economics presumes a working familiarity with fundamental concepts of classical economics. For instance, it doesn't explain terms like invisible hand, macroeconomics, or demand curve, and may take just six or seven words to explain the theory of comparative advantage. However, articles involving economics don't presume any formal training on the part of the reader and aim to be accessible to the educated layperson. The newspaper usually doesn't translate short French quotes or phrases, and sentences in Ancient Greek or Latin are not uncommon. It does, however, describe the nature or business of even well-known entities; writing for example, "Goldman Sachs, an investment bank."
Many articles include some witticism; image captions are often humorous and the letters section usually concludes with an odd or light-hearted letter. These efforts at humor have sometimes had a mixed reception. For example, the cover of the September 20, 2003 issue, headlined by a story on the Cancún WTO ministerial meeting, featured a cactus giving the middle finger. Readers sent both positive and negative letters in response.

Circulation

Each Economist issue's official date range is from Saturday to the next Friday. In the UK print copies are dispatched late Thursday, for Friday delivery to retail outlets. Elsewhere, retail outlets and subscribers receive their copies on Friday or (more often) Saturday, depending on their location. The Economist Web site posts each week's new content by Friday morning, ahead of the official publication date.
Circulation for the newspaper, audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), was over 1.2 million for the first half of 2007. Sales inside North America were around 54 percent of the total, with sales in the UK making up 14 percent of the total and continental Europe 19 percent. The Economist claims sales, both by subscription and on newsstands, in over 200 countries. Global sales have doubled since 1997. Of its American readers, two out of three make more than $100,000 a year. The Economist once bragged about its limited circulation. In the early 1990s it used the slogan "The Economist - not read by millions of people." "Never in the history of journalism has so much been read for so long by so few," wrote Geoffrey Crowther, a former editor.
The Economist Newspaper Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Economist Group. The publications of the group include the CFO brand family as well as the annual The World in..., the lifestyle quarterly Intelligent Life, European Voice, and Roll Call, touted "the Newspaper of Capitol Hill". Sir Evelyn de Rothschild was Chairman of the company from 1972 to 1989.

Letters

The Economist frequently receives letters from senior businesspeople, politicians and spokespeople for government departments, Non-Governmental Organisations and lobbies, but well-written or witty responses from anyone are considered, and controversial issues 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..
Many of the letters criticise its stance on topics such as intelligent design and global warming. After The Economist ran a critique of Amnesty International and human rights in general in its issue dated March 24, 2007, its letters page ran a vibrant reply from Amnesty, as well as several other letters in support of the organisation, including one from the head of the UN Human Rights Commission. Letters published in the magazine are typically between 150 and 200 words long (and begin with the ritual salutation "Sir"). Most other letters received are published online in "The Inbox

Censorship

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 in Singapore, The Economist regularly has difficulties with the Lee dynasty, which has successfully sued it for libel on a number of occasions.
On June 15, 2006 Iran banned the sale of The Economist when it published a map labelling the Persian Gulf simply as "Gulf" — a choice that derives its political significance from a claim by certain Arabs resulting in Persian Gulf naming dispute. Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe went further, and imprisoned Andrew Meldrum, The Economist's correspondent there. The government charged him with violating a statute against "publishing untruth" for writing that a 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.

Special features

Every two weeks, The Economist publishes special reports

(previously called surveys) on a given topic. The five main categories are Countries and Regions

, Business

, Finance and Economics

, Science and Technology

, and Other

. The reports are series of (bylined} summary and analysis articles. Every three months, it publishes a "Technology Quarterly

," a special section focusing on recent trends and developments in science and technology.
Since July 2007, there has also been a complete audio edition

of the magazine available 5pm London time on Fridays, the day after the print magazine's publication. A group of British newsreaders records the full text of the magazine in mp3 format, including the extra pages in the UK edition. The weekly 130 MB download is free for subscribers and available for a fee for non-subscribers.

Criticism

Competitors have a stereotype of Economist writers as hacks: overconfident young graduates of elite English universities who lack originality. James Fallows argued that the newspaper suffers from British class snobbery, pretentiousness, and simplistic argumentation -- and that the editorial line is often contradicted by actual news stories. Andrew Sullivan complained that it uses “marketing genius” to make up for deficiencies in analysis and original reporting, resulting in a “a kind of Reader's Digest” for America’s corporate elite. He also said that Economist is editorially constrained because so many scribes graduated from the same school, Magdalen College, Oxford. The Observer's Stefan Stern wrote that "its writers rarely see a political or economic problem that can't be solved by the trusted three-card trick of privatization, deregulation and liberalization."
In addition, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham remarked that "The Economist doesn’t even attempt to do original reporting." Elsewhere, the "newspaper" is said to have an “omniscient tone and pedantry." Editorial anonymity, said by the editor to reflect “a collaborative effort,” is said to hide the youth and inexperience of those writing articles. "The magazine is written by young people pretending to be old people," according to Michael Lewis. “If American readers got a look at the pimply complexions of their economic gurus, they'd cancel their subscriptions in droves." James K. Galbraith said the publication follows a pro-globalisation agenda. The Socialist Party (UK) described it as "a mouthpiece of international financial capital".

Editors

The editors of the Economist have been:

James Wilson 1843–1857 (Herbert Spencer was sub-editor from 1848 to 1853)

Richard Holt Hutton 1857–1861

Walter Bagehot, 1861–1877

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 Layton, 1922–1938

Geoffrey Crowther, 1938–1956

Donald Tyerman, 1956–1965

Sir Alastair Burnet, 1965–1974

Andrew Knight, 1974–1986

Rupert Pennant-Rea, 1986–1993

Bill Emmott, 1993–2006

John Micklethwait, 2006–present

References in popular culture

In The Simpsons episode "Catch 'Em If You Can", Homer is traveling by air in first class and says "Look at me, I'm reading The Economist. Did you know Indonesia is at a crossroads?" and when questioned by his wife, he simply replies "It is!" Four days later, with its customary dry wit, The Economist alluded to the quote, and published an article about Indonesia referring to the "crossroads". The title of the issue was "Indonesia's Gambit". About seven months later, The Economist ran a cover headline reading "Indonesia at a Crossroads."Further Information

Get more info on 'The Economist'.

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