Economist launching bilingual Global Business Review

Ken Doctor writes for the Nieman Journalism Lab about the Global Business Review, a bilingual Chinese and English publication from The Economist.

Doctor writes, “If this Chinese-language product works well, it won’t be The Economist’s only venture outside English. Expect Spanish to follow, with other languages added over time, as the very British Economist offers the first non-English words in its storied 171 years.

“GBR shares a lot with a number of recent digital news product launches: smartphone-aimed, visuals-forward, and offering a subset of content — at any one point, a maximum of 30 of The Economist’s overall weekly output of 70 pieces. But GBR adds a twist: It’s a flip product, allowing readers to move quickly back and forth between Chinese and English. Most importantly, though, it’s a paid product, going for $75 a year or $8 a month, underneath the $9.95-a-month media-pricing threshold we’ve seen.

“GBR readers will get an artisanal selection of The Economist — 10 stories published at the beginning of each month. Then, each day, it’ll add one new story to the offering.”

Read more here.