Newsweek – that for-some-reason-still-existing-terminally-bourgeois-mag that not so long ago informed us our troops were flushing Korans down Gitmo toilets when Gitmo doesn’t even have flush toilets, only chemical ones – has decided to raise its cover price one dollar and provide us with the “first draft of history.” [Your sentence is too long.-ed. Who asked you? My job.] Anyway, here’s the plan via the NY Post:
Newsweek hopes to double the price subscribers pay to about 80 cents a copy.
In addition to the lower circ, the mag’s content will change, moving away from chasing breaking news stories.
The new Newsweek will have four main sections. Scope will replace the old Periscope section, and The Take will feature all the magazine’s columnists.
Features will be long narratives, which Meacham is calling, “The First Draft of History,” and photo essays. The Culture will cover TV, movies and books each week, but with fewer reviews.
On the newsstand, consumers will see the cover price go up by $1 to $5.95.
Ah, those first drafts. Most of us keep them hidden, but Newsweek is upping the price. Jack Hanrahan, who runs Circ Matters, thinks they’re on to something: “It’s a very smart thing for them to try to do,” he said. Note the use of the word “try”. Good try, Jack. In the Internet Age, the newsweekly itself – even a good one (not Newsweek) – has already gone the way of stegosaurus. Raise prices? You can’t even give them away at the dentist.
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21 Comments
1. bgates:I think dentists will keep their subscriptions. That way during root canals and such they can tell their patients, “Could be worse – you could still be in the waiting room reading Newsweek.”
May 15, 2009 - 12:23 pm 2. David Thomson:Dentists and institutions will continue subscribing to Newsweek. Individuals, however, will cancel in droves. I can’t imagine either Newsweek or Time surviving. This is only delaying the inevitable. The only real chance they have is to shut down their deadwood operations completely and bet totally on the Internet.
May 15, 2009 - 12:45 pm 3. Valjean:LOL bgates!
But not really a bad strategy on Newsweak’s part: squeeze as much from the shriveled fruit as you can before it’s completely parched. They *must* know this will dive-bomb buy rates but better to cash out now than wait for the inevitable collapse.
I’m sure their advertisers are *livid* — especially if they weren’t consulted, or even if they were — but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the other dinosaurs (Time, NYT, WPo, major dailies) roll the same dice.
May 15, 2009 - 2:12 pm 4. zefal:I guess this makes us all money-hungry capitalists now!!
May 15, 2009 - 2:52 pm 5. Ralph Woods:I was at the doctor’s office just this week. Had to toss several copies of Newsweek out of the way to find something interesting to read.
May 15, 2009 - 4:10 pm 6. Scott:Time and Newsweek are only down to about 10 pages an issue…what a joy it will be to see them both die
May 15, 2009 - 4:32 pm 7. Michael C. Seaver:Print media is dying in the face of new, on the horizon technologies; i.e., thin screen operating systems. These babies are as thin as a human hair and can be embedded with equally thin CPUs. That means software driven pages — animations, et. al. Currently the Japanese are working on thin batteries that can be incorporated. But, all of this is five years away, at best. So, print media may be the first 21st Century dinosaur to be resurrected. I can see it now — Movie One Sheets that interact with the population. Ooops. “Minority Report” got there first…..
May 15, 2009 - 5:48 pm 8. Carlotta:Newsweek, forget it. When I go to the dentist I make a bee line to Highlights and the Hidden Picture.
May 15, 2009 - 7:52 pm 9. ShrinkWrapped:Roger, You said: “Ah, those first drafts. Most of us keep them hidden, but Newsweek is upping the price.”
May 15, 2009 - 8:39 pm 10. chuck:When the Times raised the price on its content (Times select) it effectively hid its first drafts; isn’t Newsweek just doing the same thing?
IIRC, Newsweek has been planning for a while to target a narrower demographic. I think they want to be a lowbrow version of the Nation. I doubt they will succeed.
May 15, 2009 - 9:20 pm 11. John Costello:I thought dentists didn’t pay for subscriptions–sending multiple copies to doctor’s offices was a way of keeping up numbers for advertisers.
May 16, 2009 - 1:08 am 12. glenn:If you don’t read Newsweek this is a not story. Kinda like raising cigarette taxes.
May 16, 2009 - 4:56 am 13. Mike_K:It’s going to work out because they also plan to have Obama on every cover from now on.
May 16, 2009 - 9:21 am 14. Jeff:Meachem’s apologia today is pretty entertaining. He claims that they ran opinionated but “not partisan” essays in the past. I guess Zakaria’s year-long (unsuccessful) campaign for a post in the Obama administration was just good reporting.
May 16, 2009 - 1:30 pm 15. Pastorius:My compliments on the great title.
May 16, 2009 - 5:42 pm 16. Gary Rosen:“Newsweek has been planning for a while to target a narrower demographic”
That reminds me of the scene in Spinal Tap where the interviewer points out they used to play sports arenas but now were in 1500-seat auditoriums and the manager replies “Our appeal has become more selective”.
May 17, 2009 - 12:32 am 17. bgates:It’s going to work out because they also plan to have Obama on every cover from now on.
I was at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago, and none of the magazines in the checkout line had Obama on the cover.
I thought there had been a coup.
May 17, 2009 - 12:33 am 18. Mike Shuster:I don’t think you should really pick on the Koran-toilet thing, Roger. At least Newsweek didn’t report that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead.
May 17, 2009 - 2:54 pm 19. GlobalObserver:That said, I have no idea who subscribes to Newsweek.
Some years ago I had a magazine handled by a national distributor in New York and flew there to meet with my rep to find out how we could convince local distributors throughout the 50 states to rack more copies on the stands.
This guy had just left a top circulation post with Newsweek for more money and a larger office, and my wasted trip involved him wanting to talk about anything except newsstand sales. He was focused on golf-talk and knocking back cocktails at a high-end Chinese restaurant in mid-town Manhattan during lunch. A year later they filed bankruptcy.
My guess is that he’s back at Newsweek, leading the charge.
May 17, 2009 - 11:07 pm 20. Ed Driscoll » Welcome National Company Of The Wiz, Spinal Tap, And Newsweek:[...] as Roger L. Simon quips, “Attention all dentists: Newsweek to raise its subscription price one [...]
May 18, 2009 - 12:13 pm 21. jungus:Features will be long narratives, which Meacham is calling, “The First Draft of History,”
May 21, 2009 - 10:15 amWouldn’t the “breaking news stories” that they are going away from be the true first draft of history?