Jan 18, 2009
The News, Weekly
The New York Times has an interesting article about the “news weekly” (think Time, Newsweek, Economist, etc). As with most printed news sources they are finding themselves changing… not failing mind you, but changing (in fact Time made a huge profit last year). They mention that these magazines offer more opinion than news and that is where their success is, but that doesn’t really fit entirely with my impression of them. I’d love to find more analysis of these publication’s supposed success actually.
Nonetheless, what really catches my eye is that Newsweek is starting to hint that they want to compete more with The Economist instead of mirroring every cover and every story Time publishes. This news doesn’t convince me to become a Newsweek subscriber by any means but it makes me wonder if we are going to enter into a new phase of wanting “harder” news. Perhaps the exit of the Bush style of “just keep shopping and we’ll be OK” has been driven into the ground? I certainly hope so. Further, it seems to me that if this is the case and we are entering into a new phase of what we want from our publishers, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope for newspapers.