Ordinary Gweilo

Via Phil, news that the Far Eastern Economic Review is to cease publication as a weekly magazine and will try to survive as a monthly.

I’m not at all surprised. I was a subscriber for a while, but I soon realized that I wasn’t actually reading very much (if any) of the magazine each week, and was getting annoyed by the articles that I did read, so I let my subscription lapse. They kept calling me and writing to me trying to get me to re-subscribe, and I fell it for it once (because the price was so low) but I didn’t renew again. I’m not surprised they were losing money – the subcription price was very low, and they must have been giving away tens of thousands of copies on top of that.

At the other extreme, I was slightly amazed to read recently that The Economist is poised to break through the 1 million circulation barrier.

The magazine’s circulation stood at 100,000 in 1970, similar to rivals such as the New Statesman and The Spectator. Today more than four-fifths of its circulation comes from outside Britain.

I have been reading The Economist for a long time, and have been a subscriber for more than 10 years. I have no hesitation in saying that it’s the best English language magazine in the world, with a breadth and depth of coverage that is unequalled. I can’t say that I always agree with their opinions, but they are usually worth reading. My only regret is that I don’t always manage to find time to read it from cover to cover.

It’s rather reassuring that The Economist is hugely successful whilst FEER is struggling. I just hope that the management of FEER take the hint and improve the editorial quality rather than focusing on cheap subscriptions and giveways.

Update: Today’s Standard says many of the same things and also makes comparisons with The Economist. Dow Jones are heavily criticised:

“They took something that made a lot of money and they trashed it,” Philip Bowring, editor of the Review at the time of the takeover, said. He left after clashes with Dow Jones management. The new owners aligned the magazine editorially with The Wall Street Journal’s arch-conservative, Amer-ican-centric line, he said, turning off many Asian readers.

Bowring said Dow Jones’ efforts to boost circulation with the student and travel markets it is now jettisoning alienated advertisers by diluting the magazine’s elite readership. Moreover, efforts to widen its appeal by simplifying stories and adding lifestyle articles on restaurants, tech gadgets and the like turned off the Review’s original readership, he said.

“You don’t notice The Economist dumbing down,” he said. “These people know who their readers are. They are not always trying to find new ones. They are trying to make sure the existing ones get what they need.”

The new monthly version doesn’t sound very appealing:

[Dow Jones] will keep the Review name alive by relaunching the title in December as a sober, plain-paper monthly of essays by prominent academics, business leaders and former and current government officials with limited advertising and no editorials.

I can hardly wait.