Newsweek is on life support. The Washington Post put the newsweekly up for sale last week and there’s been speculation that it may go the way of U.S. News and World Report, which ended print publication altogether.
Editor Jon Mecham appeared on Reliable Sources this morning to discuss the magazine’s fate. Naturally, he hopes Newsweek continues to exist in something close to its present form. A job is a rare and wonderful thing for print journalists these days.
He also talked about what, at least on the surface, seems like a questionable business plan. Newsweek has actually been trying to cut its circulation in half to deliver a more elite and affluent audience to advertisers. That may seem counterintuitive, but Newsweek probably hopes to reduce production costs and charge advertisers a premium for delivering an audience willing to part with bigger chunks of their disposable income.
Newsweek has doubled its subscription prices, presumably to winnow out the less desirable elements. Like me.
I’ve subscribed to either Time or Newsweek for decades. I’ve switched back and forth between the two several times. I’m well aware that some people perceive Newsweek to have a more liberal slant, but frankly I don’t really see that much difference between the two in terms of political perspective. Time seems “newsier” to me than Newsweek, but I certainly have no empirical data to back up that impression.
I get Time these days for a very mercenary reason. Someone gave me a gift subscription a few years ago. So I didn’t continue Newsweek when my subscription was up. But, now that I think about it, I don’t think they sent me a renewal notice.
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