My weekly update categorising articles in The Economist in relation to Covid.  This week we see a slight further rise in stories that are, principally, not about Covid and its impacts.  There’s also a further, but slow, increase in articles looking at the impact of the pandemic in the years, not months, ahead.

Background to this tracker:

I’m reading The Economist cover to cover every week (no hardship) to keep a running tally of how many stories mention the pandemic in different ways.  PR types need to assess how much of the media’s attention the pandemic is consuming, and this seemed a good metric. Certainly, The Economist is just one publication, but a peculiarly global and well-read one.  My definitions are:

• The article is mainly about the health aspects of the pandemic
• The article is mainly about the economic, business or social aspects of the pandemic (next six months)
• The article is mainly about longer-term potential changes in business/society after the pandemic
• Covid-19 is marginal or not present in this article

Naturally, the process is subjective in part, but I hope by scoring each week on a consistent basis, the trends will become of interest.  The stories in which Covid-19 doesn’t feature skew to coverage of individual countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.  I include all articles and columns, with the exception of the books and arts section, special reports, the obit column and letters.