Why does the economist have no bylines

David Markowitz. Sarah Scire. Conflict vs. Shraddha Chakradhar. Hanaa' Tameez. To promote and elevate the standards of journalism. Covering thought leadership in journalism. Pushing to the future of journalism. Exploring the art and craft of story. Harvard Trademark Privacy Digital Accessibility. The first few issues of The Economist were, in fact, written almost entirely by James Wilson , the founding editor, though he wrote in the first-person plural.

Leaders are discussed and debated each week in meetings that are open to all members of the editorial staff. Journalists often co-operate on articles. And some articles are heavily edited.

The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it. These are almost always written by a single author whose name appears once, in the rubric of the opening article. By tradition, retiring editors write a valedictory editorial which is also signed. But print articles are otherwise anonymous. The Economist , however, does not. Its articles lack bylines and its journalists remain anonymous. Part of the answer is that The Economist is maintaining a historical tradition that other publications have abandoned.

Leaders are often unsigned in newspapers, but everywhere else there has been rampant byline inflation to the extent that some papers run picture bylines on ordinary news stories. Historically, many publications printed articles without bylines or under pseudonyms — a subject worthy of a forthcoming explainer of its own — to give individual writers the freedom to assume different voices and to enable early newspapers to give the impression that their editorial teams were larger than they really were.

The first few issues of The Economist were, in fact, written almost entirely by James Wilson, the founding editor, though he wrote in the first-person plural. But having started off as a way for one person to give the impression of being many, anonymity has since come to serve the opposite function at The Economist : it allows many writers to speak with a collective voice.

Leaders are discussed and debated each week in meetings that are open to all members of the editorial staff. Journalists often co-operate on articles. And some articles are heavily edited.

The main reason for anonymity, however, is a belief that what is written is more important than who writes it. These are almost always written by a single author whose name appears once, in the rubric of the opening article. By tradition, retiring editors write a valedictory editorial which is also signed.