Against a relatively gloomy backdrop of difficulties at news magazines like The New Statesman and the now-defunct Business, The Economist is a bright spot, recently hitting a record 1.3 million in weekly circulation, the accumulation of an unbroken run of six-month increases since 1980.   

The Economist has been partly sheltered from economic woes due to its unusual ownership (50% owned by the FT group and 50% by private investors including the Rothschilds).

However, despite its current solid print circulation, The Economist has been slow in attracting online readers, prompting calls for a website redesign this year. It has also been criticized by some for having a "laughably old-fashioned" audio version of the magazine. More video is coming to the site, and the weekly has also rolled back its pay wall, allowing readers to access articles up to a year old for free.
 
The magazine's editor John Micklethwait was initially fearful of potential danger of the internet. "...It struck me that the internet had smashed through newspapers - I think the image I used was a hurricane, and it was coming straight for magazines."

He has now changed his tune, admitting that "[the internet] seems to have been a more benign force to us that I could have hoped." However, he still worries about losing advertisers to the web even if the print version seems to be retaining readers.

Source: guardian.co.uk