[OC] Abonnenten von „The Wall Street Journal“ vs. „The Economist“, 2018–2025

*The Economist* is a neoliberal British newsmagazine, while the *Wall Street Journal* is a conservative American financial newspaper. They’re both small compared to the *New York Times*, which has gone from about 4 million subscribers in 2018 to about 12.7 million today.

The *WSJ* has nearly doubled its subscribers, but the *Economist* has remained basically flat, going from 1.1 million to 1.25 or so over seven years. But maybe they don’t mind! They famously aim for an narrow, elite, wealthy audience and still make a profit every year. In the 90s their slogan was „*The Economist*: not read by millions each year.“

I subscribed to The Economist for about a decade. It was super cheap for students, and you didn’t need to prove your status every year, so long as you signed up originally with a university address.

I stopped because I bought an iPhone and suddenly had free access to their online journal, but when that ended I no longer felt inclined to sign up for the physical or digital journal.

They may not have thought things through with their digital unveiling, but then no journals/magazines did at the time, and once people get used to the idea of something being free it is very difficult to convince them otherwise.

The same thing happened with several of my weekly newspapers subscriptions.

Now I don’t want to pay for the digital versions, and the physical ones have become exorbitant due to the higher per-subscriber expenses when you are delivering to 1% as many homes in an area.