Passion Without Prejudice

Measured by popular standards, the London Economist is as out of place on U.S. newsstands as the Congressional Record in Piccadilly Circus. Devotedly British, the 116-year-old weekly Economist is scholarly and staid in its content, a bit stuffy in its appearance, and it usually devotes only five or six pages per issue to the U.S. (in "American Survey," a department introduced seven years ago). Yet last week, in 171 cities from New York to Los Angeles, the Economist did appear on U.S. newsstands. And sales were so brisk, even at 50-c- a copy, that some spots in Manhattan sold out in two days, while a Washington dealer, having run quickly through an allotment of a dozen, called plaintively for 18 more.

Honky-Tonk Lunches. The Economist on last week's newsstands had 136 pages, was the fattest issue in the history of the publication (Economist staffers steadfastly decline to call it a magazine, always refer to it as "the paper"). The newsstand sales put U.S. circulation up to 7,500 and total circulation to 60,500, both Economist records. But however encouraging such figures may be to Economist editors, they fully realize that what matters most about the Economist is not how many readers it has, but who its readers are. And the sort of people who read the Economist have made it one of the world's most influential publications.

In Britain's Parliament the Economist is read and followed so widely that it is sometimes called "the alternative government." In the U.S. it is quoted more often in the press than any other foreign publication. It is considered required reading on Wall Street and Capitol Hill; the Central Intelligence Agency alone gets 200 air-expressed copies weekly. Few statesmen pass up Economist invitations to lunch in the Honky-Tonk, the staff's irreverent name for the restaurant in the basement of the Economist's London headquarters on Ryder Street.

The Economist's influence stems from a journalistic ideal, first defined in 1843 by its creator, a liberal London banker named James Wilson, and restated a century later by Sir Geoffrey Crowther, editor from 1938 to 1956. The Economist's creed: "To hold opinions, to hold them strongly and if need be to express them strongly, but to have as few prejudices as possible." Following that creed, the Economist tries to be passionately nonpartisan on parties, passionately partisan on issues. Founding Editor Wilson argued spiritedly for free trade, and his successors have pounded relentlessly against import quotas, for the convertibility of sterling, for lower tariffs and more foreign aid. In 1956 the Economist rebuked Sir Anthony Eden, then Prime Minister, for his rash invasion of the Suez; it has challenged Britain's decision to stay out of the European Common Market, and strongly questioned the wisdom of diplomacy by summit conference.

Friendly Critic. While the subject matter may seem ponderous, the treatment is not. Beginning in 1938 with Editor Crowther, a brilliant writer with a gift for aphorism ("the soft underbelly of Europe" was his phrase, not Churchill's), the Economist has produced some of the best writing in journalism. Parkinson's Law (that administrative staffs grow an inexorable 5% a year) was first drafted in the Economist. A friend to the U.S., the Economist can still issue sharp criticisms of U.S. policy: "The Eisenhower Administration, while having a policy towards the world, has consistently lacked policies for particular parts of it. It has had an attitude, but not solutions--a diagnosis, but no remedies." In its attitude toward the cold war, the Economist is succinct: "The essential thing is for the West to stand by its own concept of the world it wants to make. The challenge will then be to the Russians."

Under its present editor, Donald Tyerman, 51, who took Crowther's place when Crowther became managing director in 1956, the Economist cleaves to the course set by Founder Wilson. "If," said the Economist a century ago, "we know that a nation is capable of enduring continuous discussion, we know that it is capable of practicing, with equanimity, continuous tolerance." Continuous--and highly intelligent--discussion is the Economist's contribution to Britain and to journalism.

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