THE QUALITY OF ECONOMIC WRITING IN FOUR MAGAZINES

This paper is the result of a study of the writing of the business and economics sections of four mass-circulation magazines. The author attempts to rank the magazines according to their effectiveness in communicating technical business information to the general public. THE PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER is to rank four of the most popular news-weekly magazines with respect to their effectiveness in communi-cating technical economic information to the public. The magazines included in the study are T ime, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and Business Week. These magazines are all very similar in size, format, and depth of coverage. With the exception of Business Week, they are all directed at the general public, and can be considered alternate sources of weekly news information. Business Week is directed to a profes-sional audience and may not be directly comparable with the other three magazines, although its coverage of economic material is similar in scope to that of the other magazines. I have included Business Week, largely out of curiosity, to see how it compares with the general audience publications