It’s a shame The Atlantic has not yet posted articles from its new issue online at the time of this blog entry’s composition. I can only recommend that you pick up a copy (or make yourself a note to check back online soon) for an interesting article about the contrast between a thriving weekly newsmagazine, The Economist, and the dying TIME and Newsweek.
Michael Hirschorn writes:
Virtually alone among magazines, The Economist saw its advertising revenues increase last year by double digits ? a remarkable 25 percent, according to the Publisher’s Information Bureau. Newsweek’s and Time’s dropped 27 percent and 14 percent, respectively. (The Economist’s revenues declined in the first quarter of this year, but so did almost every magazine’s.) Indeed, The Economist has been growing consistently and powerfully for years, tracking in near mirror-image reverse the decline of U.S. rivals. Despite being positioned as a niche product, its U.S. circulation is nearing 800,000, and it will inevitably overtake Newsweek on that front soon enough.
How? You’ll have to read the article to learn, although John Hood, Jon Ham, and Rick Henderson are unlikely to face any sense of shock when they read the following:
The Economist has become an arbiter of right-thinking (free-market right-center, if you want to be technical about it; with a does of left-center social progressivism) at a time when arbiters in general are in ill favor.
