« The Newseum | Main | BANANA and Other Little Known Truths: The Fortune Brainstorm on Technology »
July 17, 2008
Serious Works
I had lunch on Tuesday with Jim Hoge, editor of Foreign Affairs, the monthly review of foreign policy issues published by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. The headline from the lunch is that the serious minded readers of this publication are growing in number and are engaging with both print and on-line versions. Here are some of the highlights of lunch:
1) The publication now sells approx. 200,000 issues per month globally, up by five times since Hoge took over as editor ten years ago. About 15% of those issues are sold on the newsstand, for the fancy price of $8 a copy, versus $30 for a full year subscription.
2) The average reader is college educated (97%), has a graduate degree (61%), and has high income ($1.3 million mean income, $555,000 median income indicating a few really rich people at the far end of the spectrum!). More than 80% of the readers hold professional and managerial positions.
3) A recent study indicated that there are four million Americans very interested in foreign policy, so Hoge is bullish on the prospects for his magazine.
4) The average reader spends two hours with each edition. There is a very high correlation between readership of Foreign Affairs and the Economist.
5) Hoge is hiring a separate staff to bolster the on line version, ForeignAffairs.com. His goal is to become a focus of discussion on foreign policy matters. If Senator McCain issues a policy pronouncement on Iran, then ForeignAffairs.com will cover it and offer a discussion aggregator function for others to chime in. Context is provided in the Background section, which offers articles from past years on the specific policy. A new version of the on-line product goes live in September.
6) The future of the magazine also depends on going global. The Indian edition, published with the Times of India, has some content from the US edition but is largely focused on Indian issues. Both Chinese and Middle Eastern versions are being contemplated. There are Japanese, Russian and Latin American editions as well in local language.
7) The top source of new subscriptions comes from a small box on the top of the on-line edition’s home page that offers a year-long print engagement. Hoge said that he is getting 3,000 new subscribers a month from the online offer.
8) The magazine is attracting advertising from financial services, high end products (auto) and corporations seeking to enhance their reputations. Unlike many publications, the magazine has not organized conferences to bolster revenue.
The success of this magazine is further proof of dispersion of authority from traditional mainstream media such as newsweeklies toward specialized enterprises that focus on niche markets.
For us those of us in PR, we should recognize:
• There is growing desire among influentials for quality – evidence by growth of credible media brands like The Economist and Foreign Affairs
• To reach opinion leaders today we need to engage specific media with substance and data, while attending key forums events such as Davos, which provides the opportunity to engage and critique ideas in person.
I would appreciate your views as always.
Posted by Edelman at July 17, 2008 3:40 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.edelman.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/601
Comments
I agree that there is a movement towards quality. However I think it is part of the shift towards a need for quality INSIGHT over INFORMATION. Information is now freely available.
Posted by: Jessie Paul at July 22, 2008 10:36 AM
I like the idea of insight over information. Insight comes from listening to everyone, not just those with access to the mainstream global trends due to coincidental privileges (speaking and writing in English, access to good technology). It's nice to know that a fantastic and well-respected publication like Foreign Affairs is seeking out insights at the individual and the local level as well as continuing to provide top notch global trends and information.
Posted by: Linda Margaret at July 24, 2008 4:54 AM
Environmental activists/Protesters storm your UK offices and no comment from the CEO. If it's Robert Redford vs. Richard Edelman, I'd put my money on Redford and the activists. Maybe you can invite him to lunch and smooth things over.
Posted by: JamesBruni at July 24, 2008 9:57 AM
Jim,
Check out chatteringclass.co.uk for the Edelman UK response to this.
Thanks,
Richard
Posted by: Richard Edelman at July 25, 2008 2:37 PM