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Today’s conversation: The Economist’s president, Luke Bradley-Jones, discusses how The Economist modernizes its operations, distribution and packaging while staying true to its brand. Plus: On PvA, we tackle why Media People are a vanishing species.
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“Customers want to get closer to our journalists”
The most successful publishers are brands as much as publishers. They represent a differentiated point of view that’s expressed in many ways and ultimately need to mean something to the audience, ideally as an expression of identity.
The Economist is an enviable brand. At 182 years old, it has a consistent point of view as a champion of free trade, free expression and democratic governance. It’s classic rationalist liberalism, in the European sense of the word, delivered with British understatement. And it’s a point of view that, until recently, was a default assumption, at least in elite circles. That’s now changed in a time of populist passions and mercantilism. The Economist’s regular odes to the power of markets can now read as somewhat subversive in a media environment where ideological combat is rewarded.
The Economist faces a similar kind of populist challenge in the Information Space, as a quintessential monolithic brand, even without bylines to emphasize its collective point of view. That runs counter to the premium placed in decentralized media on individual voices rather than institutional voices.
“There’s nothing more important than The Economist point of view,” Luke said. “The core written product remains no bylines, remains the collective viewpoint of the brand. That’s really been a signature of our journalism.”
The Ferrari model
Ferrari is the brand Luke compares The Economist to, admiring the Italian carmaker’s strategy of establishing scarcity to drive value. While rivals like Porsche churn out station wagons and SUVs, Ferrari limits its production to less than 14,000. It has a waiting list of buyers, deliberately keeping supply lower than demand. That enables Ferrari to enjoy 28% profit margins, triple the typical mass carmaker. It is, as The Economist itself has noted, more like a luxury brand than a carmaker.
“Enzo Ferrari wanted to make one less car than there was demand for in the world,” Luke said, while recognizing the limits of the analogy since The Economist’s mission is to spread its ideas. That tension is one of many that are inherent to media businesses.
“What we can do is create content that is scarce in its nature,” he said. “And if we do that and we don’t make it available anywhere apart from behind our paywall, then that creates something which is really valuable and quite scarce in nature for our existing customers and our future customers.”
Sticking with globalization
The Economist is a true legacy brand, with a history that goes back to its roots opposing the Corn Laws in mid-19th century that restricted free trade. It has remained remarkably, even stubbornly consistent over the years in its point of view. I’ve found that tight lens both admirable in its consistency and at times monotonous. (It’s infrequent you do not know which direction The Economist will go on an issue. It will always remind you that Europe is overtaxed and over-regulated, for instance.)
The global populist wave has made the brand more interesting, as it now gives a defense of liberal values that until a very tan man rode down an escalator were the default assumption, at least for the type of people who go to Davos and those who want to think like them.
“What remains more valuable than ever is what The Economist offers: an independent, fact-based, fearless point of view on the world’s stories that’s human-created and crafted, rigorous, and with an impact well beyond the scale of our customer base,” Luke said.
Lifting the veil on the hive mind
The Economist is hardly about to pivot to being a creator network. From its origin, it has mostly skipped identifying the authors of its pieces, reinforcing its collective point of view that Luke calls its “hive mind.” In research with readers, The Economist found that restraint created a mystique, even an aura. That led to a new strategy that puts its journalists more front and center through newsletters, podcasts and The Economist’s new twice-weekly streaming show, The Insider, which features The Economist’s journalists and guests on the big issues of the week. A recent episode caused a stir when Steve Bannon told a clearly incredulous Zanny Minton-Beddoes that everyone needed to accept that Trump would run for and win a third term, in contravenance of the Constitution.
“Customers wanted to get closer to our journalists,” Luke told me. “They want to understand more of the thinking behind what they were reading every week. They wanted to be in a conversation.”
Skipping lifestyle
The Economist’s business is solid if unspectacular. In fiscal 2025, The Economist Group expanded revenue by 2% to $485 million, and a $63.3 million operating profit, two-thirds of which is now classified as digital. The core of the business is its 1.25 million subscribers. The Insider is a subscriber benefit, although it is open to all at launch thanks to a sponsorship from Anthropic.
The Economist does not look to imitate The New York Times. The Times has executed a mass strategy to get to 12 million subscribers, adding lifestyle offshoots to its bundle to appeal to a far broader audience. The Economist instead wants to keep a high average revenue per subscriber. The New York Times makes about $120 per subscriber; The Economist makes $240.
The Times has aggressively expanded its brand, adding cooking, sports, shopping and gaming. The Economist, in contrast, has mostly stayed in its lane. Its lifestyle offshoot, 1843, has been pared back from a standalone publication to an occasional franchise. Business publications with rich readers understand that those same readers like to spend their riches. That’s why luxury brand-friendly offshoots like the FT Weekend are so valuable.
“We deliberately have not invested into lifestyle,” Luke said. “We have not expanded coverage into more generalist news. We haven’t gone into sports.” The reason: “to maintain the level of quality and rigor that goes into every single word.”
Going multimodal
The Economist still has a strong print business. Many news weeklies have moved onto the harvesting stage of their existence with print products that are, if not an afterthought, far less of a focus. Luke estimates the print product is “still central to about a third of The Economist’s subscribers.” It remains the anchor to the brand, still something of an intellectual status symbol for the business-class airline lounge.
“In a world of digital overload, especially as the world of AI slop comes along, that pleasure of holding something in your hand is going to become more important, not less,” Luke said.
Digital now accounts for roughly two-thirds of total revenue, and 85 percent of new subscriptions are digital-only. Like all brands, The Economist has gone multi-modal, with 2.8 million subscribers to its newsletters, a stable of podcasts, and an emphasis on its app. The Insider is The Economist’s most aggressive move into video. And the company’s AI Lab is tasked with reimagining the digital content experience with translation, audio options, summarization, and personalization.
“We’re trying to create a very different experience from what the app is today,” Luke said. Your experience will be quite different from mine.”
Why TIME’s email engagement is soaring
TIME’s newsletters reach millions of readers every week. But until recently, they were stuck with clunky workflows, limited insights, and flat engagement. After migrating 13 newsletters and millions of subscribers to beehiiv (with zero downtime) things changed fast. Open rates on “Inside TIME” jumped 63.8%. Click through rates across their portfolio increased to 11.7%. Editors now publish faster, with better tools and real-time insights. TIME proves that even the most established media brands can evolve and thrive when they own their email strategy.
On Media People
On PvA, we continued the conversation on what makes one a Media Person. We are in the midst of a revival of Media People, with Michael Wolff’s star turn in The Epstein Show and Olivia Nuzzi’s return to the limelight. Media is better with a frisson of drama. Media People understand that. Troy believes that the power of Media People was sapped during the scale era through the excessive focus on centralization, efficiency and, of course, traffic. Imagine Hunter Thompson, another Media Person, handed a pageview quota.
We are due for a revival of Media People. Tina Brown, obviously a card-carrying Media Person, made the point that the media business has become a drag because it’s hard to take chances and simply have fun when you’re constantly on the defensive.
“It’s like all the fun has come out of work. Because now for the journalism-media world, it’s all about: How do you get a platform that anybody will look at? How do you raise the money for it? What can you say that some sponsor doesn’t want you to say? This was a period that I lived through where it was this hell-for-leather pursuit of great stuff, and I had a ball doing it.”
I have no idea for what “hell for leather” means, but I’m going to find out and add it to future newsletters.
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