Alas, Poor Newsweek

Next year Newsweek magazine will celebrate the 80th anniversary of its founding.  Earlier this month it was announced that the print edition will not reach that anniversary.  The magazine is going digital-only and will be called Newsweek Global.

Over the years I have subscribed, at various times, to the three traditional print news weeklies: Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report.  As I reflect upon how long it has been since I received a print copy of any of the three of them, I realize it shouldn't surprise me in the least that Newsweek is succumbing to a changing market.  In the magazine business it is referred to as a "challenging" situation for print advertising.  Challenging, indeed.

It is difficult to make money on print advertising when print circulation is declining. Furthermore, it is easy for advertisers to tell whether online readers actually pay attention to the ads, because they click on them. No click means the ad was ignored.  You just can't tell, with a print ad, whether the reader even noticed.

[It is interesting, then, that in some lines of publishing - medical journals being an example - advertisers still want print ads in print journals, even though they know more and more readers are reading the journals electronically.  I'm still trying to figure that out, and I suspect they are, too.]

I cannot help wondering what the long-term future of news publications holds. There are so many sources of news and opinion online that are free (once you have Internet access and a device that allows you to connect and read).  People will surely expect it to be free, and if you want to charge for it, you will have to offer something of value readers cannot get elsewhere.  Otherwise they'll be thinking, hey, if your competitors can make it on ad revenues alone, why can't you?

When the New York Times started charging for online content, I started looking elsewhere for high-quality news reporting.  I thought, gee, if The Washington Post is still free, why should I pay for the Times?  It's not like their journalism is clearly superior.  They may be called the "newspaper of record," but they are also the newspaper of Jason Blair.  Woodward and Bernstein wrote for the Post.

By nature I am conservative, a creature of habit who prefers the traditional and opposes change that seems to have no impetus beyond a desire for change. However, as much as I am a creature of habit, even my habits change.  And sometimes they have help from unexpected sources.

I used to read a local newspaper.  Then we got a new carrier.  He refused to put the paper in the delivery box.  It was too much trouble.  Emails to the home delivery department of the paper resulted in his putting the paper in the box for a week or so, and then he'd go back to tossing it in the driveway.  The problem was inclement weather, in which a plastic wrapper was inadequate to the task of keeping the paper from becoming an unreadable, sodden mass by the time I got home.  A long series of emails, each followed by an all too transient change in delivery and then a return to bad behavior, led to the end of my print subscription.

I now read local news - when I want to subject myself to bad reporting and worse writing - online, without paying for a subscription.

Two years ago Newsweek merged with The Daily Beast, a news and opinion Web site.  Selected content from the new Newsweek Global will be made available via The Daily Beast.
Full subscription to Newsweek Global will be paid.  It will be interesting to see whether people will be willing to pay the extra money for that.  Maybe I'll start reading The Daily Beast to see what is being done under the editorial leadership of Tina Brown.

So far I haven't done that, largely because it never occurred to me that something with that name could be taken seriously.

I know one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but how can one not judge a publication when its creators give it a name like that?

The target readership for Newsweek Global will be "a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context."  I'm not sure how highly mobile I am, because I've been living in the same township for 27 years.  I like being an opinion leader, however.  (Except when the drug companies want my help with marketing.  Then I just tell them they won't like my opinons.)  I desperately want to learn all I can about world events, and I long for sophistication.  So I may just have to check this out.  Except for that one nagging drawback: they'll expect me to pay for it.  Hmmm.  Maybe they'll have an introductory offer that will be too good to pass up.

I will still have to find something else to read in the barbershop.  Popular Mechanics, anyone?