在平面媒体每况愈下的今天,《经济学人》在过去七年中的发行量翻番。其实这也是英国的科班与好莱坞大腕的差距,BBC的自然专辑和National Geography的差距。
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Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economist (from vanityfair.com)
by Matt Pressman
“We’re going to turn things around by being like The Economist.” That line is beginning to rival “10 secrets to perfect abs” for the title of most overused magazine cliché. It has been a mantra for America’s weekly news magazines for three years now, and as The New York Times reported last week, it has spread to several other magazine genres.
It’s a logical impulse. While other magazines are hemorrhaging readers and laying off staff, The Economist's circulation has doubled in the past seven years and its ad pages have steadily increased, even as it remains unusually expensive to both readers and advertisers.
But while raising subscription and newsstand prices might not be a bad idea, trying to imitate The Economist in other ways is a fool’s errand. The news weeklies can never be like The Economist, no matter how hard they try. Here are the four main reasons why.
4. They don’t understand what The Economist is
Time and Newsweek seem to think The Economist is an opinion journal, and that emulating it is simply a matter of adding more analysis, a stronger editorial viewpoint, and maybe cleverer covers. In 2006, Newsweek editor-in-chief Jon Meacham told the New York Observer, “The Economist doesn’t even attempt to do original reporting, particularly.” He’s wrong. Last week's Economist, a typical issue, published stories datelined Tallinn, Colombo, and Lagos. A little help for you Newsweek readers out there: those cities are located in Estonia, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria. But instead of filling their articles with self-serving quotes from government ministers you’ve never heard of, The Economist’s correspondents just give you the essential facts and a meaningful takeaway, whether the information came from their own reporting, the local press, or some obscure think tank.
3. They can’t win over the finance crowd
In a quote that The Economist leveraged for one of its savvy ad campaigns, billionaire Larry Ellison said, “I used to think. Now, I just read The Economist.” The magazine has managed to become the other must-read for financial types (the first being The Wall Street Journal). What the lay reader may not realize when perusing The Economist’s dispatches from all corners of the globe is that these articles are serving up actionable information designed to help investors figure out what to do with their money. Case in point: this week’s piece on Sri Lanka laid out the dire humanitarian situation there in the wake of a mini civil war, but it also looked forward to what the government will need to do in order to achieve reconciliation and financial stability. Newly stable countries offer excellent investment opportunities; countries torn by endless insurgencies, not so much.
2. There aren’t that many readers up for grabs
There’s a limited market for what The Economist offers, and they’ve already claimed the vast majority of it. As media columnist Jon Friedman wrote last year, “there are only so many Americans smart enough to enjoy [The Economist’s] articles.” I disagree with Friedman slightly. Reading The Economist is not like reading Thomas Pynchon—the articles are short and straightforward, and they never use a 50-cent word when a five-cent word will do. The real problem isn’t intelligence but interest; there are only so many Americans who actually care about international news. Sure, we like to read about wars and disasters and scandals, but we don’t need a weekly update on Japan’s political malaise or the energy business in Brazil. And although The Economist's U.S. audience has grown impressively, it started from an extremely low baseline (ten years ago its North American circulation was barely 300,000) and is still nowhere near Time in terms of circulation. As former Economist editor Bill Emmott told The Guardian in 2005, “We will never be a direct competitor to Time or Newsweek.”
1. They can’t match the snob appeal
Every eight years someone writes a well-argued take-down of The Economist. The most popular charge, which James Fallows first articulated in The Washington Post in 1991, is that people just carry the magazine around to look sophisticated. Its readers, Fallows complained, are in thrall to its “smarty-pants English attitudes” and “Oxbridge swagger”. (The next big hit job came from Andrew Sullivan, writing in the New Republic in 1999, followed by a briefer one from Tom Scocca in the New York Observer in 2007). While Fallows and his fellows tend to be too dismissive of the magazine’s merits, they’re right about its snob appeal. All the ingredients are there. It is a relatively recent foreign import with a distinguished pedigree and a significantly higher price than its competitors. It has an inscrutable title (much like another magazine we know and love) that is clearly not designed to appeal to the masses. And ah, those delightful British spellings and expressions! Of course people like to be seen reading it and to tell all their friends how wonderful it is. The Economist is like that exotic coffee that comes from beans that have been eaten and shat out undigested by an Indonesian civet cat, and Time and Newsweek are like Starbucks—millions of people enjoy them, but it’s not a point of pride. Reading The Economist or drinking cat-poop coffee shouldn’t be either, but as the quirky lead sentence of an Economist article might say, “Human beings are peculiar in many ways.”
- Re: zt Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economistposted on 04/27/2009
Economist 偶尔看过,觉得不错,但我迟迟不肯订,就是因为它的广告词里有这么
一句话:I used to think. Now I just read Economist.
没有一个杂志可以狂到宣称替我思考。
Time 订了好多年,去年给停了,因为它的舆论偏颇到了我无法忍受的地步。
- posted on 04/27/2009
from vanityfair.com?
This reminds me of the line that male readers of playboy are actually after the articles.
不好意思,赶紧跑回来。
老瓦 wrote:
在平面媒体每况愈下的今天,《经济学人》在过去七年中的发行量翻番。其实这也是英国的科班与好莱坞大腕的差距,BBC的自然专辑和National Geography的差距。
--------------------------------------------
Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economist (from vanityfair.com)
- Re: zt Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economistposted on 04/27/2009
苏三也有那么一点点edgy哈。
Susan wrote:
Economist 偶尔看过,觉得不错,但我迟迟不肯订,就是因为它的广告词里有这么
一句话:I used to think. Now I just read Economist.
没有一个杂志可以狂到宣称替我思考。
Time 订了好多年,去年给停了,因为它的舆论偏颇到了我无法忍受的地步。Ditto. - Re: zt Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economistposted on 04/27/2009
Here is the link, with some nice pictures on the side bar:))
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/when-will-magazines-stop-trying-to-copy-the-economist.html - Re: zt Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economistposted on 04/27/2009
and the question is, what brought you there in the first place? :-)
老瓦 wrote:
Here is the link, with some nice pictures on the side bar:))
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/when-will-magazines-stop-trying-to-copy-the-economist.html - posted on 04/27/2009
Because Playboy will never be Vanityfair.......is this the preferred answer given the context;))
moab wrote:
and the question is, what brought you there in the first place? :-)
老瓦 wrote:
Here is the link, with some nice pictures on the side bar:))
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/when-will-magazines-stop-trying-to-copy-the-economist.html - posted on 04/27/2009
...talking about deflection.
老瓦 wrote:
Because Playboy will never be Vanityfair.......is this the answer you have in mind? ;))
moab wrote:
and the question is, what brought you there in the first place? :-)
老瓦 wrote:
Here is the link, with some nice pictures on the side bar:))
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/04/when-will-magazines-stop-trying-to-copy-the-economist.html - Re: zt Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economistposted on 04/27/2009
And BTW I flip through my wife's Vogue and Women's Health from time to time, you know, for interesting articles, among other things. - Re: zt Why Time and Newsweek Will Never Be The Economistposted on 04/27/2009
vanity fair is a good magazine. The best writers in US all write for VF,they pay your words. playboy也有非常好的文章,反而什么New yorker之类很装逼。
VF's articles are great recently.
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