Why do all of Economist's articles lack author names?

Most magazines and newspapers use pseudonyms under articles to identify the author. However, articles in The Economist often remain anonymous. What is the reason for this?

Celebrating 170 years since the first article on Economist.com was published on September 2, 1843.

According to The Economist's editorial board, the magazine is still maintaining a traditional writing style that many other publications have abandoned. Historically, many publications have printed unsigned or anonymous articles, the purpose being to give writers the freedom to express their own opinions and to allow publications to create a unique impression.

However, to make a stronger impression, from the outset, anonymity was used to highlight opposing viewpoints in The Economist. This allowed multiple authors to synthesize information from various sources into a single article. Each week, in meetings, the editor-in-chief would discuss and debate with all the editors. At this point, the journalists were merely collaborators, and some articles would be almost entirely "transformed," becoming the product of a collective effort rather than that of a single author.

This magazine asserts that what truly defines a publication is "what they wrote and published, not who wrote it." And in the words of Geoffrey Crowther, editor-in-chief of The Economist from 1938 to 1956, anonymity helps editors understand that they are “not masters but loyal servants of something greater than themselves… it gives the newspaper an incredible dynamism, both in terms of ideas and in the adherence to principles.”

The self-assessment section at the beginning of each article usually includes the author's name alone. Traditionally, retired editors who wrote a representative editorial would also sign it, but the printed version would remain anonymous.

According to The Economist, however, there are differences used at this publication. A few years ago, we decided to start using signatures under blog posts to avoid confusion from duplicate authors (for example, the blog post about "American Democracy" - which focuses on political topics).

Each journalist will have different opinions, so we will use initials to distinguish them. This method will not lead to any errors, but in our opinion, the best method is a combination of both anonymous and full signatures. We also include names to identify our journalists when they appear in videos, and many of them include links to their Twitter accounts below their names.

According to Infonet