April 6, 2008
Time, Newsweek have Economist envy
Time and Newsweek struggle to remain relevant to readers and advertisers. The WSJ reports on latest Newsweeks job cuts of 111 jobs cut including older and higher-paid editorial help. The goal is to cut costs and invigorate the publication.
Newsweek is trying to recover by boosting the new hold and covering things more seriously. Time shifted is publication cycle to Friday from Monday.
The competition isn't just cable news and the internet. It's also the Economist magazine:
In 2007, the Economist newsmagazine, published by U.K.-based The Economist Newspaper Ltd., saw an 8.5% increase in advertising pages compared with 2006, according to the Magazine Publishers of America. By contrast, Newsweek's advertising pages dropped 6.7% and Time's fell 6.9%.
But long term the biggest threat is indifference.
At a recent speech at Columbia University, Mr. Meacham delivered a blistering response after he asked who reads Newsweek and none of the 100-odd students in attendance raised their hands.
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Under Niagara Falls
Boing Boing: The Vanishing Point, a site dedicated to urban exploration and secrets of the built environment, has a page about the massive abandoned Tailrace tunnel at Niagara Falls.
Posted by eubie at 9:52 AM permalink | TrackBack
More signs of distress for daily newspapers
The front page of businessjournalism.org is a a sad commentary on the state of daily newspapers. Here are the current front-page stories:
From Business Editor to Business Owner -- Henry Dubroff, founder and editor of the Pacific Coast Business Times, talks about making the switch and doing it successfully.
Inside the Weekly's Winning Playbook --Columnist Jonathan Higuera says weeklies have an upper hand because they clearly understand their audience.
Imitating the Weekly -- "Why don't you dailies start copying what works for the weekly business papers?" Blogger Chris Roush asks the question.
Add that to April 3 story in Columbia Journalism Review: RIP: Stand-Alone Biz Section -- They were thin, sure, but they were something. The article included this chart of the disappearing section:
One thing the chart doesn't include were all the Monday tabloid sections started by daily newspapers to combat the growing local business journals at that time. Those sections began to disappear several years to the standalone Monday sections.