The Economist in a time of economic crisis

Marketwatch media columnist Jon Friedman writes Monday about how The Economist is faring during the current economic meltdown.

Friedman writes, “The Economist has been aggressively trying out new ideas. Rossi said the innovation of offering subscribers three-year subscriptions (as opposed to the much smaller time frames generally employed in magazine publishing) has worked ‘fantastically well. This enables us to serve our core audience.’

“It approaches its audience in a different way, too. ‘The underlying problem in magazine publishing is that many books think that the readers are less valuable than the advertisers,’ Rossi said. See related story.

“The London-based Economist has flourished in the U.S. by focusing on building its brand in this country. The brain trust believes that the public will pay a premium price for something that it considers to be a premium product. The Economist carries a hefty price tag of $6.99 an issue, but it offers no apologies while appreciating the loyalty of its ‘passionate, engaged’ readers.”

“‘Once you’ve built a brand, you can put your prices up,’ Rossi said. The price of a single copy of a magazine ‘should be at the top of the range, not the bottom.'”

Read more here.