Posted on 12/29/2009 7:19:47 AM PST by abb
Less than a year ago, during yet another public discussion about the future of traditional media, I said that it seemed extremely unlikely that, for instance, Newsweek would last another five years, provoking guffaws among blogger types and stout denials from the magazine (i.e. a minor kerfuffle).
Newsweek and its parent, the Washington Post Co., announced yesterday a significant cut in its rate base, a further round of buyouts and layoffs, and a plan to make an already anorexic magazine even thinner. The Washington Post Co., for good measure, added its own bad news and bleak outlook.
My prediction about Newsweek seems to have been significantly optimistic (when I made it, I confess to thinking it was irresponsibly exaggerated). I would revise it now to two years: Sometime around the fourth quarter of next year, Newsweek will be shuttered (possibly there’s a phase where it goes bi-weekly, or even monthly).
The people at Newsweek and at the Washington Post Co. will be as adamant and dismissive about denying this as they were about my original assertion. And yet, they obviously can’t be certain they have a positive future (or any future).
All they can honestly say is that they are trying to find a way to go forward that will keep them in business, but they haven’t found it yet. Now, I am not sure that would be a good idea to say—it might further cause advertisers and readers to desert the magazine, and further demoralize the staff.
On the other hand, it might be this gap between putting on a good face and the stark reality of the present mess that is making people so much more desperate and crazy. Not that long ago, the covers of Newsweek and Time were among the most important individual pieces of media in the nation. Now they are irrelevant and unmentioned.
This decline and approaching death does not merely have to do with the present circumstance. The present circumstance (we have yet to coin a useful and evocative name for this terrible present circumstance) is really just the deus ex machina.
The weak and lingering will no longer be able to resist. But how do you confront this? How do you say to your colleagues and your customers, while we’re still here today, in all honesty we’re toast tomorrow?
Saying anything other than that is so obviously corporate baloney, as well as the natural human inability to face the abyss.
Gosh, what will Fareed Zakaria do now?
ping
As a clueless highschool student decades ago, both TIME and NEWSWEEK were my handy sources of footnote material for all kinds of “social studies” papers. They reigned supreme all through the 60s and 70s amongst those looking for just that kind of E-Z Guide to world realities. Even then they were crap. NOW, just replaying the words of Evan Thomas earlier this year, you can see how deeply they’ve fallen into that big steaming pile of crap they’ve made of themselves.
It’s going to die because the new format and content, announced earlier this year, was DOA. Because while the official approach was to be more balanced opinion, in reality the mag just turned farther left. So, it got no new readers from the center or right.
I used to read Newsweek religiously as a young man. Now I refuse to even buy an airport copy because I don’t want to add even one iota to their circulation totals. I’ll only glance at it in the doctor’s office and even then I have to hold my nose.
Good riddance.
These media types crack me up....just go back to business 101....any business plan or product that automatically alienates 50% of your potential customers is doomed to failure....can’t make it clearer than that
What will Keith Olbermann do for guests? Half his guests he introduces as either current Newsweek or former Newsweek icons....
Well said !
What that jackass does has as much importance in the general scheme of things as what Newsweek prints on it's pages.
At which point, they simply become one more information web site among millions of free sites already established, trying to painfully eke out a tiny living with diminutive revenues as a subscription pay-site, which is a model that has mostly been a failure.
Virtual subscriptions automatically give up all revenues from impulse retail purchases of an actual magazine, as well as the thousands of subscriptions for medical offices, which need something to leave laying around for bored patients to read while they wait for doctor.
Personally, I see no hope for paid magazine subscriptions that are downloaded onto special gizmos. The magazine format for conveying information has simply been rendered completely obsolete by information delivery by the whole world wide web. There's really nothing that can save them.
I'm waiting with bated breath for Time-Warner to spin out their magazine business into a new, standalone publicly traded entity. I think such a company is a guaranteed short.
And there is nothing the unions can do about it.. . except to get TARP $, and that is a very short term solution.
The Washington Post and N.Y. & L.A. Times have carried the democrats water for decades.
What with the trillions stolen by these thieves in congress you’d think they’d subsidize the best propaganda machine the party could ever pay for.
And why does a dope like Howard Fineman get so much play?
Newsweek is a libral rag and deserves to die.
It is a totally worthless magazine.Only highly slanted lefty comment and the damn thing isn’t even good as a beer coaster
Don’t force me to be Giddy. Newsweek ha ha ha this feeling could last me at least till the new year. Bye Bye left wing losers.
May their death be painful and humiliating.
Götterdãmmerung has a nice ring to it. So to speak.
My doctor told me he has never bought a magazine subscription.
If you buy certain products from the drug salespersons, you get magazine subscriptions for free.
The final issue of NewsLeft will have no content at all. Just a cover with Obama’s glowing visage under a photoshopped halo.
Good riddance.
And to the Washington Post, too.
It can’t come soon enough.
(it would be a public service to email links to these threads to the boards of directors of the leftist media)
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