Identification: London-based weekly financial newsmagazine
Date: Launched in September, 1843
Significance: With more than half of its 1.3 million subscribers in the United States, The Economist represents and influences the economic and sociopolitical views and interests of American corporations and executives as part of an Anglo-American, free-market business tradition. The neoliberal perspective it espouses has come to penetrate the greater part of globalized commercial operations and thinking.
Since its nineteenth century inception, The Economist has been located in London. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, as New York City replaced London as the world financial center, the publication has become representative of Anglo- American business perspectives, issues, and interests. Throughout its existence, it has been a leading advocate of free trade, supporting market factors and private enterprise as the axis of economic activity.
Founded in 1843 by the Scottish free-trade advocate James Wilson, it initially appeared as The Economist: A Political, Commercial, Agricultural, and Free-Trade Journal. In 1861, famed economist and constitutional scholar James Bagehot became editor. At its founding, the magazine had a circulation of approximately two thousand. It reached the one million mark in 2005. The newsmagazine has become part of a larger media conglomerate known as the Economist Group (half owned by the Financial Times), which publishes periodicals such as Intelligent Life and Roll Call and includes the business research agency, the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The magazine’s focus has primarily been business, finance, and politics, but its subject matter has grown to include science, technology, and the arts. Printed each week on Thursdays, it appears simultaneously around the world in numerous regional editions and is available online. News items incorporate robust editorial viewpoints. Articles usually appear without a byline and bear a uniform writing style known for its taut economy and ironic wit. These qualities contribute to the stylish, cosmopolitan appeal The Economist holds for its globalized executive readership.

See also: Bloomberg’s Business News Services; Coin’s Financial School; Forbes; Fortune ; newspaper industry; Reader’s Digest; USA Today; The Wall Street Journal.