Posted on 05/05/2010 12:26:34 PM PDT by FormerACLUmember
The Washington Post Co. is putting Newsweek up for sale in hopes that another owner can figure out how to stem losses at the 77-year-old weekly magazine. The publishing industry has been struggling as businesses cut back on ad budgets during the recession. But Newsweek, along with Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report, faces a particular challenge finding a relevant niche in the age of up-to-the-second online news. Once handy digests of the week's events, they have been assailed by competitors on the Web that pump out a constant stream of news and commentary. Despite staff cuts, Newsweek has remained a drag on its parent company, which is also struggling with ad declines at its namesake newspaper. The Post Co. said Wednesday that it has retained the investment bank Allen & Co. to help find a buyer for the magazine. With advertising revenue falling across the industry, Newsweek has been piling up losses since 2007 and expects those losses to continue this year. It did not reveal specifics, but results from the first quarter are due out Friday. The Post Co.'s magazine division had an operating loss of $29.3 million in 2009, compared with a $16.1 million loss the year before. Newsweek sold about 26 percent fewer ad pages in 2009, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. That percentage decline was consistent with the industry average. The magazine has lost about a quarter of its staff to voluntary buyouts over the past two years, ending 2009 with 427 full-time employees. "Newsweek's staff has been remarkable in cutting expenses and putting out a great magazine," Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham said in an interview. "But we did not see a path to sustained profitability within the company."
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
What would replace daily newspapers though? Local TV news is awful.
I hereby bid $1.00 paid in cash and another $1.00 note to be paid in 3 years at 5 percent interest.
That’s like saying “I have a big pile of garbage and toxic waste on my property, who wants to buy it?”
Who in their right mind reads the despicable, flamingly dishonest Newsweek?
Who would pay one penny for this dead tree propaganda rag? Newsweek long ago destroyed all its credibility.
It is too bad that they are still publishing the Washington Post. It will be a day of great joy when both Newsweek and its parent newspaper close their doors permanently.
Well said.
I recently picked it up again and was stunned at how ridiculous it had become. It wasn't even pretending to be a news source anymore. It was an outright Democratic Party vehicle.
It read like it was being written by James Carville and Rahm Emmannuel. Astonishing bold faced lies and ridiculous comical spin on everything.
It will not be missed.
Don't laugh. The liberals were talking about rescuing the New Yawk Times a few weeks ago.
If Newsweek goes under, what will become of Elenore Cliff?
That’s too much. You’d get the obligations with it.
Seems to me the little prick editor of the Newsweak rag would show up on Imus’s show spewing his libertard b.s. all the tme.
Ya had to know it was only a matter of time. Buh Bye.
Our local rag, the Orlando sentinel, got some kid to talk my wife into subscribing on weekends only (she felt sorry for the kid). They give us a paper almost everyday now. Why? I'd bet my house its to inflate the readership stats so they can charge advertizers more.
What asset does Newsweek have other than the copyright to the name and images?
Anybody could buy it and turn it into a conservative magazine overnight.
The problem is that even a conservative newsweekly just won’t last. The market won’t tolerate 3 anymore. There’s already Time and US News.
The irony is that nobody can run it as cheaply as WaPo can. They already have a stable of writers who can use their research to write a newspaper article and then a magazine article.
The problem: Newsweek over the past year has damaged their brand severely. All they had to sell was their reputation and that’s now worthless.
I would see a conservative weekly crowding out Time and USNews, just like Fox crowded out CNN and MSNBC.
It brand was damaged to conservatives, but if conservatives took over, that would be rapidly repaired.
Having these sit in doctors’ office around the country would be huge.
A new owner to figure out what’s wrong with Newsweak?
Try firing your liberals and make it a truthful (i.e. conservative) publication
Voila! There’s your profit
I was thinking Rush.
Maybe you could save the magazine if you started by telling the truth.
Paging Michael Moore.
All print media is under big pressure these days and weekly news-magazines are especially challenged - their news is obviously up to a week late, and their analysis is easily replaced by many free online sources. And in Newsweek’s case, it doesn’t help that the magazine abandoned any pretense of objective journalism years ago.
That's crazy talk.
But it gives me an idea. We could merge it with another national weekly news magazine that went web-only a little while ago. You probably remember it. It was the one with the BatBoy stories.
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