Martin Walker, head of magazine consulting firm Walker Communications, attributes The Economist’s success to its contrarian approach. While other newsweeklies are delivering more graphics and shorter articles and rushing into video production, The Economist is increasing the number of long-form stories it carries and has no ambition to produce video.
“Mass intelligence” is the term (The Economist Group’s chief executive Andrew) Rashbass uses to describe what the magazine wants to achieve through its content. He sees The Economist as a way of bringing elite media to the masses…
The Economist has eschewed video partly because Rashbass does not believe there is real money in it. He argues that good quality video is expensive to produce and does not get enough viewers to justify the investment.
“In contrast to U.S. companies that are looking to broaden their revenue streams through video and social media, The Economist wants its content to stand out even more as exceptionally high quality and worth paying for,” Phillips said.
