5 Lessons Learned About Media Viability from Embedding with The Economist

By: Linda Ngari |08/22/2024

More than 1.2 million people today pay for subscriptions to read The Economist. The outlet recorded over $60 million in profits over the past year, with a significant chunk of revenue coming from these paid subscribers.

I had the chance to spend two weeks this summer embedded at The Economist as a recipient of ICFJ's 2024 Michael Elliott Award for African Storytelling. I was curious to learn about their successful digital strategy, and see if there might be any takeaways that could be applied to newsrooms in my home country of Kenya.

A few things I learned about how they keep their content compelling and stay sustainable stood out.

1) It takes a village

"The Economist is one voice," explained Jonathan Rosenthal, the outlet's Africa editor. Whether it's a story about climate change, politics or health, reporters based all over the world are able to share their thoughts during editorial meetings.

At least five editors read through each story before it is published, to harmonize tone and ensure consistency with the newsroom's style guide, which I noticed was within arm's reach at every reporter's desk.

As part of the in-house style, interview quotes are often paraphrased, and a direct quote can only take up three lines at most. There are no bylines, a rule that protects reporters' safety in certain higher-risk countries.

Before editorial meetings, individual departments meet separately to tinker with story ideas for the week. Members of the graphics team provide suggestions about the magazine's cover art, and teams of researchers, data journalists and fact-checkers review each article before publication.

The division of labor helps the newsroom prioritize important content and mitigate the risk of publishing misinformation.

2) A diverse editorial team

The Economist's reporters and editors have all kinds of backgrounds, including many from outside the journalism industry.

Britain News Editor Richard Cockett, was previously a university lecturer in history and politics at the University of London, and U.S. Correspondent Tamara Gilkes Borr had been a public school teacher. Borr has been able to draw on this experience to inform education-related stories, such as her reporting on how parents in the U.S. want their kids to have cell phones in school in case of mass shootings.

Having subject matter experts on the team can improve storytelling and enhance idea exchanges during editorial meetings, ultimately leading to more comprehensive news coverage.

3) Talent retention

It is common for staff at The Economist to rotate between editor and reporter positions, departments and even countries.

The newsroom offers regular training, too. For instance, during my two-week embedment they hosted two workshops on AI. The newsroom tries to ensure that staff are as well-rounded as possible, and that they stick around.

"People are only half-joking when they say that someone who's been here for five years is still relatively new," said Executive Editor Daniel Franklin, who has been at The Economist for 40 years.

Most staff I interacted with have worked at the outlet for at least 10 years.

4) Reinventing, repurposing and restrategizing

The Economist offers all of its content in print and on its website. It also distributes over 20 weekly newsletters, runs five podcast channels (plus special podcast series), and two apps - The Economist, which curates all of the magazine's content, and The Espresso, which offers daily news at a glance. One newsroom team produces vertical video content for Instagram and TikTok.

According to The Economist Group's annual report, 86% of the outlet's new subscriptions are digital-only. "The digital transformation of our business means we can deliver more insights, to more people, through more channels than ever," the report states.

The change to digital has also led to a larger shift toward subscriptions. "We used to rely on ad revenue from the magazine, but not anymore," said Ketna Patel, who has worked for The Economist since 1996. Last year, subscriptions brought in over $250 million in revenue.

5) Lessons for newsrooms in Africa

As I consider lessons from The Economist for newsrooms in Africa to improve viability, major challenges surrounding how people prefer to consume news - and whether they'll pay for it - become apparent.

For example, The Economist's content lives behind a paywall, and the outlet offers a series of plans at different price points.

It is unclear whether paywalls can function as a reliable source of revenue for newsrooms in Africa. In Kenya, the 65-year-old Nation Media Group (NMG) has deployed an experiment-driven development approach with digital-first, mobile-first and audience-led content in hopes to increase revenue. In 2021, NMG introduced paywalls for The Nation, its Kenya news site, and in 2023 for The Citizen in Tanzania and Daily Monitor in Uganda.

An assessment of NMG's paywall strategy in Kenya surfaced a series of obstacles to its success. Users often logged off as soon as they encountered its paywalls, for instance, and subscribers would copy and redistribute content.

"Editors were under pressure to ensure the paywall works and [as a result] they ended up publishing any story and locking it behind the paywall," an NMG employee is quoted in the study. The challenges of losing readers led NMG to suspend its paywall strategy in June 2022 for a period of time before later relaunching it. What has seemed to work well is offering readers the option to pay daily for access, which about 80% of NMG's subscribers do through micropayments on their smartphones.

In Nigeria, news outlets such as THISDAY, The Guardian, and Vanguard offer subscription models for their digital editions, for prices as low as 30 cents per week, according to a report by Code for Africa. In Morocco, most publications are freely available, with major outlets such as Hespress relying on online advertising.

The outlet with the most paid subscribers - more than 100,000 of them - on the continent is News24. News24's most basic payment plan is five dollars per month.

What is more clear is that strategic, quality content can help drive paid subscriptions.

Instead of competing in the breaking news field, for instance, The Economist typically publishes in-depth analyses and explainers of pressing issues. Somewhat similarly, African newsrooms like News24 and NMG have adopted a freemium model, placing their in-depth, investigative stories behind a paywall, while breaking news content remains free.

An audience will always come back to reliable reporting - a reputation that The Economist has fiercely upheld since 1843.