According to the last UK Audit Bureau Circulation figures published on Thursday February 17, the circulation of the Economist, hit, in the last six months, its top average in its 167-year history.

As the Guardian reported, weekly circulation topped 200,000 in the UK for the second half of last year, up 7,7% on the previous six months and up 11,1% year on year. The Economist's global circulation now totals 1,473,939, a year-on-year growth of 3,7%, the bulk of the copies being sold in North America.

The steady growth the Economist has experienced (publisher Yvonne Ossman underlined it was the 59th consecutive six-monthly increase in circulation, with continental Europe sales up 0.9% year on year and 0.3% on the period to 240,743) fits in with a positive general bent of the current affairs magazine sector, according to the Guardian.

The Guardian reported a 6.4% increase year on year for Dennis Publishing's The Week, as the Oldie showed solid growth of 7.2% year on year. Even if fortnightly satirical title Private Eye was down 1.5% compared with the second half of 2009, that period was when it posted its best sales figures since 1992. The rightwing weekly the Spectator was also marginally down of 0.1% over the period. "Investors Chronicle, from FT Business, was one of the rare fallers in the current affairs sector, with circulation dropping 5% year on year and 2.2% period on period to 28,516", wrote the Guardian.

"The news and current affairs sector looked robust", wrote Press Gazette and "two titles at the very high-brow essay-based end of the market did particularly well". In fact, the article reported, "current affairs monthly Prospect rose 12.3 per cent year on year to 31,932 and fortnightly political and literary essay title The London Review of Books rose 9.6 per cent year on year to 53,215 sales".

These data are even more interesting if compared with newspaper circulation, as "the quality national newspaper titles were again the biggest circulation losers in November 2010 with six feeling double-digit year on year declines", as the Press Gazette reported (you can see November average daily sales followed by percentage change year on year here).

Are these data indicative of a general trend suggesting that the more in-depth analysis that weekly magazines provide sells better than daily news?

As reported earlier, a recent study by former Daily Express editor and Daily Mail executive Richard Addis, argued that the UK's top dailies are lacking analytical articles, compared to opinions article and news. As noted, Addis said it is not hard to see the reasons why analytic writing may have declined.
Despite this and despite the fact that the best-selling titles are those which provide a lower percentage of analysis (two of those are tabloid, fact from which one could argue that "tabloid news" is the truest indicator of newspapers' circulation success, as earlier underlined), might the circulation figures of magazines and the growth of the Economist really indicate that, in this world of endless flow of information that we are exposed to, readers feel a need for deep, serious analysis and this is something that dailies should look to?

Image source: theday.co.uk
Sources: The Guardian, Press Gazette (1), (2),