The Economist is a weekly newspaper that is published in London. The Economist group owns it. The organization has one editor and about 75 staff journalists. It is a media company that specializes in international business information. It is owned by various families, including Agnelli, Schroder, Rothschild, and Cadbury (Sreekumar, 2021). The Economist group dates back to 1843. Its first paper was written in 1843. It evolved into a newspaper that is structured like a magazine. However, it was considered a journal before evolving. The Economist supports free immigration, drug liberalization, same-sex marriage, and free trade. They classify themselves as being liberal individuals. This essay will analyze the Economist in terms of editorial direction, the network of authors, range of topics and modes, and semantic profile.
Editorial Direction and Network of Authors
The company includes its mission statement on the first page of each issue discussed. As posted on their online website, their mission is to "offer insight, analysis, and services that its customers value.” In 1843, James Wilson, a liberal politician, founded the Economist (Sreekumar, 2021). He played the role of the company's chief editor for sixteen years, which enabled him to campaign for free trade through the newspaper. The Economist has a distinct advertisement strategy since they present their issues in different ways. They apply mainly sarcasm in their adverts and takes a more shocking and blunt approach in their presentation. They use these approaches to present their many strong controversial opinions (Wroe, 2018). From this, it is evident that their primary audience is more opinionated and younger people.
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Although 75 authors and journalists write the article and news stories for the Economist, all of their stories do not have authors listed; their journalists remain anonymous (Sreekumar, 2021). Their website stated that part of their reason for this is that they ensure they maintain a historic tradition abandoned by other publications. Their articles are not from single authors but instead from “The Economist’s hive mind” (Sreekumar, 2021). They believe this helps what is written becoming essential more than who wrote it. They want their writers to have that "hive mind," so they do not have any authors that express opposing political viewpoints. The editor’s name is Zanny Minton Beddoes, who has been the editor since 2015. Looking into the editors' past, each stays with the company for 10 to 15 years (Sreekumar, 2021). She is the first and only female editor to ever work for The Economist. Looking back into the history of all of the people who worked as editors of The Economist, they are all extremely liberal, outspoken people with strong economic and financial backgrounds. The Economist characterizes itself as neither left nor right-wing, though, and they take much pride in that. They define their standpoint as "the radical center" because while they favor deregulation and privatization, they also support gay marriage and want to legalize drugs (Wroe, 2018).
Range of Topics and Modes
Back in 1843, the creator of The Economist defined 13 areas of coverage that he wanted the journal to cover. Among them is the need to cover a commercial gazette, books, and law reports confined to an area of commerce, manufacturing, and agriculture. More areas include general news from Scotland and Ireland and the popular movement of free trade. They still actually abide by these thirteen topics pretty closely, but they have added in a lot more of a westernized view than they had before, now that half of their readers are from North America (Sreekumar, 2021). Their style now is very dry humor with witty and sometimes almost offensive pictures and statements. They almost have a sort of shock factor to them, and a lot of their topics with this style heavily incorporated come back with a pretty even mixture of bad and good responses and reviews.
As mentioned earlier, they don't reveal the author's name for particular posts because they like to appear as a collective whole. However, the only things they put author names on are surveys and some more heavily weighted topics and issues, which the editor will normally list her name on (The Economist, 2017). Many different authors often edit the anonymous posts before they are posted. They use mostly featured articles style and do a lot of analysis as well. From looking at their website, it also looks like they do many custom illustrations and pictures that weigh in on controversial issues, and the images always get people talking, which is what they seem to be going for (Wroe, 2018). They cover a broad range of topics, though. Anything that the government brings forward or feels the government needs to deal with will bring forward and write about in detail.
Semantic Profile
After reading through some of The Economist's articles, it is evident that their style is heavily connotative. They strongly support liberal politics and demonstrate liberal views with little leniency. Two of the major honorifics that they mention are Adam Smith and David Hume (The Economist, 2017). They view these two as the creators of the type of liberalism that these two men practiced. Adam Smith is a philosopher with strong morals, and he laid down foundations for the free-market economic theory, which is one of The Economist's major topic focus areas. David Hume is also a philosopher from the same era. Some keywords found on The Economist's website that define their arguments are "leaders," "briefing," and "finance" (The Economist, 2017). These are three of the major categories that their articles are organized by. The Economist has a style guide that has a list of requirements for their writing. According to them, their writing should be readily understandable. It seems like they want to inspire people to have this clear and inspired thinking about their viewpoints. One of their main goals seems to be spreading, pushing, and creating strong liberal opinions.
The Economist is extremely opinionated, and they do not ever engage opposing views. Although some sources claim that they did bring up an opposing viewpoint, they only brought it up to tear it down (Wroe, 2018). They try their best to appeal to only certain views and are very strict on this. Their website has an entire dictionary that defines words they use to describe the text in how they perceive the words to be defined. So not only are their viewpoints and information they put out very particular, but their definitions and vocabulary are very specific.
Conclusion
The things that are obvious from the Economist’s articles and their website is how defined they are and their blunt and sometimes offensive way of going about the news. It appeals to a lot of people’s thoughts, especially Americans. The liberal view is becoming so much more popular now than it was before, especially amongst millennials. One of the Economist's most direct competitors is The Financial Times. They are both British newspapers that have finance and business-oriented standpoints with strong liberal opinions. Besides, TIME magazine may be a more indirect competitor, only because TIME has a broader spectrum of customers and readers. I believe that The Economist settles in very well with the left-wing of the political spectrum. Although they identify as being neither, it's undeniable that they lean towards the left, considering that most of their viewpoints and topics are identical to those of the strong left-wing. Although I do not believe in all of the same things that The Economist, I enjoy reading a lot of their articles and exploring their website.
Sample Article is provided on the Appendices page.
References
Sreekumar, G. (2021, January 20). From Hawick to Hawick: The story of The Economist founder James Wilson . Business Standard. https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/from-hawick-to-hawick-the-story-of-the-economist-founder-james-wilson-121012001578_1.html.
The Economist Group. (n.d.). Our mission . Our mission | Economist Group. https://www.economistgroup.com/what_we_do/our_mission.html.
The Economist. (2017). Why are The Economist's writers anonymous? The Economist. https://medium.economist.com/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous-8f573745631d.
Wroe, A. (2018). The Economist Style Guide . Profile Books. http://www.benjaminjameswaddell.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/the-economist-style-guide.pdf
