Economist Magazine - Well Educated Well-off Readers Only Please

For more than 160 years the Economist informs a worldwide audience with Economic Financial and Political news that affect economies at a local and global level. We examine the main characteristics of this established publication.

The first year of the economist magazine was 1843 when it started as a weekly news and international affair publication. It has evolved into a weekly magazine that targets people with main interest in Business, Economics, Global economy and Politics with above the average level of intelligence. Indeed it takes some effort to read and comprehend the Economist if you are outside the areas of business, trade or government.

The Economist magazine has a very loyal audience; the weekly circulation is nearly 1.5 million issues and almost half of them are sold in the United States; a major portion of the Economist subscription volumes comes from other continents, mainly Europe and Asia. It is interesting however to notice a decrease in the search trend for the magazine in main search engines like Google and Yahoo, possibly indicating a change in loyalty and habits from those who follow the magazine closely.

One of the most interesting features of the Economist is the way that the articles are written; there is a uniform voice from the first up to the last page of every printed issue, giving the impression that only one person writes the content. According to the magazine's editors, it is more important to promote a unique personality and style to the magazine, rather than promote individual writers.

The magazine's special report feature running every fortnight is also one of the main characteristics focusing on a standard topic like Countries and regions, Business, as well as Finance and Economics. And the Technology quarterly, a special section that gets published every three months, targets the latest trends and recent advancements in science and technology.

The publication is always facing criticism throughout its history, not to mention censorship attempts from political regimes. Recent criticism example is a claim that the magazine was clearly promoting Obama throughout it's running for Office. One of the latest successful censorship attempts was the ban of the circulation of the magazine in 2006 in Iran, because of the mentioning of the Persian Gulf simply as 'Gulf' in one of the maps.

It is apparent that the magazine is trying to follow trends, and embody them in to their business; they maintain a well respected Web site, with 3.6 million visitors per month on average (nearly 1.2 m from the US), mostly men, between the age of 35-65, Caucasian with an above the average monthly income. There are digital and mobile editions, an online shop, and the ability to post classifieds online and offline.

However, the magazine fails to make the most of the Internet in terms of acquiring more subscribers, simply by ignoring the importance of running a separate global affiliate program; instead the Economist simply relies on itself, and on standard Web distribution channels (Amazon, magazines.com) for sales.