Megan Garber studies the transformation of a newsweekly:
This is what we tend to forget when we talk about journalism’s evolution: The news brand, in the past — for all its exclusivity, for all its anonymity — was much more than a brand, with all the corporateness and cravenness that that term can imply. It was also an identity. It was a purchased proxy for a personal worldview. … What The Economist has managed to capture — to recapture — is, I think, the sense of self and self-containment that defined media brands before those brands became social. The Economist sells a self-image that’s high-class, high-culture, high-end. Depending on where you stand, it is either congratulatory or aspirational. But, even then, it’s inviting.
The Dish 