Newsweek's new look

Last year, Newsweek turned 75, but what should have been a joyous year became an annus horribilis when accounts revealed that revenue had fallen by 13 per cent, which - as the FT.com notes - is the title's "first loss in recent memory," dropping lower than even parent company's star performer, the Washington Post.

Washington Post Company chairman, Don Graham, expects 2009 to be particularly tough for all of the corporation's publications, although he did seem hopeful that they would "return to profitability." How exactly he expects they will manage this, is not yet clear, but Newsweek believes it has the answer.

Newsweek's 5-year plan, expected to go live in May, will see it abandon the mass market in favour of a select audience earning an average annual salary of $100,000. This will mean cutting circulation from the 2.6m it currently promises advertisers to just 1.5m by January next year. However, the architects of the plan believe that by introducing higher subscription prices and readjusting advertising rates, they will more than make up for any losses.

Newsweek, who once used to rival Time, is now preparing to try its luck against the Economist and New Yorker. Both titles respectively shift an impressive 711,000 and 1m copies in the US and, are generally considered to have respectable and robust business models, which have helped them through the global economic crisis.

While print design will see a return to more white spaces and bolder imagery, Newsweek.com - also bound for a relaunch - will provide alternative links to top news sites.

Newsweek's proposals echo the magazine's rebranding in Europe back in 2005 where, within a year, profits went up by 20 per cent. The revamped European model is said to have helped Newsweek in 2008, with ad pages increasing by 13 per cent, despite the downturn claiming falls for both Forbes and BusinessWeek.

Nevertheless, while the plans demonstrate "a very well thought-through redesign," as Lee Doyle, CEO of North America at Mediaedge: cia recently said, the folks at Newsweek have a colossal job ahead of them. According to US-based the New Publishers Information Bureau, advertising revenue dropped 27.1 per cent in 2008 and just last month it fell by a further 19 per cent. Even those titles mentioned above, such as the Economist, which have done better than most at weathering the downturn, "saw an 11 per cent first quarter fall in contrast to 25.5 per cent growth in 2008," reports the FT.com.

Besides, Newsweek's plans were not welcomed by everyone. Last week, L. Brent Bozell III wrote a damning article about the publication on the Wall Street Journal website, with the headline "The End of Newsweek." Bozell said we should wonder "about the decline and fall of the American "news magazine" - as if Time and Newsweek haven't already shed that label in everything but name." He went on to compare Newsweek's new business model to "the captains performing violin solos on the deck of the Titanic."

Meacham and Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek's international editor, may not be surprised at the harsh comments; Bozell's criticism of Newsweek follows a cover story by the news magazine called "The Decline and Fall of Christian America," which appears to have unwittingly offended Bozell, a catholic rights activist who sits on the board for the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.


Returning to Newsweek's plan, chief executive Thomas Ascheim is philosophical: "We've not been the first place for the first word. But we'd like to be the first place for the last word."


Sources: FT.com , WSJ.com , Newsweek.com