Don't apologize for your content's value, Economist boss says

The MagNet publishing conference was kicked off Tuesday night with an upbeat presentation at Hart House inToronto by Paul Rossi, executive vice-president and managing director of the Economist Group. He gave a summary of the thinking and principles that have been and are driving the Economist worldwide, resulting in a growing circulation, now over 1.2 million.

The Economist believes in the growth, not the diminution, of mass intelligence, at the same time it has identified that consumers no longer stay inside the lines when it comes to consumption of everything, including information. The Economist reader values what the magazine does and is willing to pay for it; Rossi says that the average sub recovery is about $101 a year and their expectation is that reader revenue (now about 48%) will grow to dominate the bottom line -- in other words, an extension of their perception of value in the brand.

He told the crowd that their research shows the 'mixing and matching' tendencies of modern audiences but also of Economist readers. For instance, the average Economist reader at an airport buys The Economist, a bottle of water and the decidedly trashy, downscale US Weekly. "Something is happening," he said.

He was coy about the web; it is clear the magazine does things that make money (events) and spends less time on things where making money is harder (the web). But it was interesting that he said the proportion of Economist subscribers who access its website has held steady for 4 years at about 35%. Print, for now, is still primary.