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April 22, 2009
Newsweek: Daring Upward
I had breakfast this morning with Newsweek editor Jon Meacham (who won the Pulitzer prize for non-fiction this week for his book on Andrew Jackson), publisher Tom Ascheim and foreign correspondent Lally Weymouth (disclosure: close friend). Newsweek is re-launching on May 18, moving up-market, aiming to compete with the Economist and the New Yorker for a higher end reader. Here are the highlights of the conversation:
1) Newsweek will cut its rate base from 2.6 million guaranteed circulation to 1.9 million as of May 18, then move to 1.5 million by January, 2010. It will do this in part by raising its subscription price from $25 to $50 and also raising its newsstand price. Its target demographic is a reader with $100,000 annual income, a college or professional school graduate, with interest in business and politics. The magazine will have better paper stock (thicker, whiter) and a new design. This is exactly what was done with Newsweek International two years ago; it led to more advertising and higher circulation, while retaining the best core relationship.
2) There will be several deeply reported articles in each issue such as the recent piece on advertising executive Peter Arnell. Meacham said, “We will have articles that are truly additive to the conversation. We will not just chase the week’s news to add a detail or two.”
3) The tone of the magazine will change to be more opinionated and analytical. “We will report and opine more,” said Meacham.
4) There will be more emphasis on business coverage. The goal is to be more global-minded and economics-oriented. “We will be more like the Financial Times than the New York Times,” said Meacham.
5) The columnists will be grouped together in a section called the Take. There will be a section on Business called Enterprise. The third section, The Culture, follows arts and other “pursuits.”
6) The Newsweek web site will have more user-generated content. Users will be able to communicate with each other. Ascheim said, “We want to be a place for serious discussion of issues. This will be prompted by excellent and provocative content.” There will also be photo galleries such as the Obama Election Gallery, the number one stop on the site.
Those of us in the PR community will have to re-think our media strategies for clients to include Newsweek as a serious place for business and politics, along with Business Week, Forbes, Fortune and the Economist. We also will help clients contribute to discussions on newsweek.com, thereby engaging reporters as well as stakeholders, publicly and in real-time.
The broader implications of a smaller, more elite audience are profound, in that mass consumers of news are now skipping the evening network broadcasts and will not be served by news weeklies. We will have to find other ways to reach the broader audience on issues; in particular through company web sites to provide journalist-quality depth of information on issues such as environment or healthcare. We also will help clients to participate in existing communities from the WEF’s Facebook page to Twitter. I would appreciate your views as always.
Posted by Edelman at April 22, 2009 2:53 PM |
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Comments
Seems they're defining their offering to attract advertisers. No harm there. In a busy world where messages are getting shorter, it seems counter-intuitive to follow wordy New Yorker. PR professionals are learning to keep it short. Shouldn't they?
Posted by: Brian Berkman at April 23, 2009 12:02 PM
As "mass consumers of news are now skipping the evening network broadcasts and will not be served by news weeklies..." will the trend be toward continued communities of interest, and less ability to forge diverse coalitions? If all of us read only sources with which we agree, and there are fewer and fewer mass sources containing varied opinions and perspective, it seems to me that we become a country of isolated groups, rather than a unified country. Setting aside the PR implications, this seems a bit chilling to me. Perhaps I'm mistaken...
Posted by: Sean Williams at April 29, 2009 5:46 PM
What really stood out to me with all the new ideas that Newsweek has about social media was doing was the user-generated content that will be on the Newsweek Web site. I think that is a good move for "Newsweek." A lot of the business world is user generated now and it would only be appropriate for Newsweek to have a Web site to do the same thing. It's very obvious that "Newsweek" wants to appeal to a certain target audience. A target audience who consists of people with around a $100,00 annual income and a college or professional school education. This would be a great target audience for people to be able to get on the "Newsweek" Web site and discuss serious issues going on amongst each other. My dad is a perfect example of the clientele Newsweek is trying to reach with all these news ideas and everyday I see him in conversations with people about his company, the economy, etc. and I think it would great for people like my dad to be able to have conversations like that but with people all across the United States and the rest of the world.
Posted by: Whitney Babcock at May 4, 2009 10:59 AM
The greatest asset to Newsweek’s re-launch could be the addition of user-generated content. Communication between consumers and employees of Newsweek will be valuable to all involved. Reader’s get the chance to voice their opinions and Newsweek gets feedback. Everyone loves to give their opinion and thoughts so why not give readers the opportunity to do so. I will be interested to see how Newsweek’s changes turn out.
Posted by: Kathryn Sutton at May 14, 2009 8:41 AM
I believe it is overall a good decision for Newsweek to better direct its resources towards more specific audiences. Although the price jump does seem a bit steep, we will have to wait and see how it all plays out for them in the end.
Posted by: Adam Faragalli at May 14, 2009 9:09 PM