The Wall Street Journal and USA Today working on new magazines to supplement weekend newsprint editions
The Wall Street Journal and USA Today might introduce magazines into their weekend newsprint editions. Both magazines would focus on lifestyle material such as jogging traveling, kayaking and hiking, and would attempt to exploit an advantage of magazines that remains despite the digital age; that advantage being the allure of glossy thick pages to advertisers.
Indeed, newspaper revenue at the New York Times declined by 0.7% from 2005 to 2006, yet increased 14.3% for magazines over the same period, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
The future of the magazine project at The Wall Street Journal is not too certain as there have been no official proposals made and if Dow Jones & Co. is sold projects underway could be cancelled or stalled.
The magazine project at USA Today is much further along, with a launch date set for October.
Peter Kreisky, a media consultant, said of the Wall Street Journal's magazine project: “They missed a larger opportunity with the Saturday edition to create a product that doesn't look and feel like the weekday product because it's not reaching people in their offices or commutes; it's reaching people at their homes.”
Kreisky adds: “One of the fundamental rules of publishing is to envisage where people are when they read your publication, because that really determines what the design and look and feel should be.”
The experience offered by glossy pages and quality pictures make magazines a staple for beauty, fashion and other lifestyle advertisers’ money. The advantage offered by magazines could become vital for newspaper companies as they continue to compete for advertising dollars with television, website, magazines and other media.
Source: Advertising Age
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YOU MISQUOTE ME HERE. My remarks were in reference to The Wall Street Journal, not USA Today. Please issue a sorrection.
The AdAge article reads:
The Journal has a chance to take its "Weekend Edition" in a direction it should have pursued when it was introduced in 2005, said Peter Kreisky, the media consultant. "They missed a larger opportunity with the Saturday edition to create a product that doesn't look and feel like the weekday product because it's not reaching people in their offices or commutes; it's reaching people at their homes," Mr. Kreisky said. "One of the fundamental rules of publishing is to envisage where people are when they read your publication, because that really determines what the design and look and feel should be."
NOTE TO READERS: The misquote indicated by Mr. Kreisky has now been fixed - I had previously wrote that Mr. Kreisky's comments were about USA Today, where I should have written his comments were about the Wall Street Journal.
Apologies to Mr. Kreisky and our readers for the mistake.