Circulation
Each Economist issue's official date range is from Saturday to the following Friday. In the UK print copies are dispatched late Thursday, for Friday delivery to retail outlets and subscribers. Elsewhere, retail outlets and subscribers receive their copies on Friday or Saturday, depending on their location. The Economist online posts each week's new content on Thursday afternoon, ahead of the official publication date.
In 1877, the newspaper's circulation was 3700. In 1920, it had risen to 6000. Circulation increased rapidly after 1945, reaching 100,000 by 1970.
Circulation is audited by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). From around 30,000 in 1960 it has risen to near 1 million by 2000 and by 2012 to about 1.5 million. Sales inside North America were in 2007 around 54 percent of the total, with sales in the UK making up 14 percent of the total and continental Europe 19 percent. The Economist claims sales, both by subscription and at newsagents, in over 200 countries. Of its American readers, two out of three make more than $100,000 a year.
The Economist once boasted about its limited circulation. In the early 1990s it used the slogan "The Economist – not read by millions of people." "Never in the history of journalism has so much been read for so long by so few," wrote Geoffrey Crowther, a former editor.
The Economist Newspaper Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Economist Group. The publications of the group include the CFO brand family as well as the annual The World in..., the lifestyle bi-monthly Intelligent Life, European Voice, and Roll Call. Sir Evelyn Robert de Rothschild was Chairman of the company from 1972 to 1989.
Read more about this topic: The Economist
Famous quotes containing the word circulation:
“Thought reading is like the circulation of the blood. We are all thought readers only we don’t pay attention to it.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“We did not heed the sentries at the gate, nor did they us, and what under the sun they were placed there for, unless to hinder a free circulation of the air, was not apparent.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is probably not more than one hundred dollars in cash in circulation today. That is, if you were to call in all the bills and silver and gold in the country at noon tomorrow and pile them on the table, you would find that you had just about one hundred dollars, with perhaps several Canadian pennies and a few peppermint Life Savers.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)