Newsweek Planning Major Overhaul, Striving To Compete More With Economist Than TIME

New York Times:

Newsweek, owned by The Washington Post Company, is planning a major overhaul this year. It has not made its new vision public, but executives have said it will strive to be a "thought leader," competing more with The Economist than with Time -- in other words, a big stride in the direction it was already headed. The strategy includes a major reduction in circulation and operating costs and a focus on an elite audience to attract advertisers.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[AZterritory]

08:51 PM on 01/18/2009

Yeah, their idea of "improvement" is getting Karl Rove as a columnist. We cancelled when that happened. (Get The Economist now, it's a bit too right for us, but still better than anything else out there.)

[Serfie]

03:23 PM on 01/18/2009

The Economist is by far the best English news weekly in the world. A few years ago TIme and Newsweek decided to dumb down their material and become more like tabloids, so I dumped them. But I still regularly read The Economist.

In America, journalists want to become celebrities, even though they are mediocre talents at best.

The Economist doesn't even have bylines and their product is far superior than the crap in Time and Newsweek.

[Hoisin]

02:13 PM on 01/18/2009

How in the world can Newsweak compete with the Economist? First off the Economist is a free market biased British staffed mag(to call it conservative is in error). Now Newsweak is going to put up its liberal biased in-forclosure journalists up against that? Lets try learning how to budget our personal finances before we send out these dolts to do battle with a magazine that does comprehensive studies about inflation targeting. This is like having a kid fly a 747 just because he played a video game on flying.

[swift goat pet for truth]

02:00 PM on 01/19/2009

Since when has Newsweek been "liberal"?

Some one who would call Newsweek "liberal" would call Fox "Fair and Balanced".

[Topper23]

08:06 PM on 01/20/2009

Since you only read Pravda, Izvestia and The Daily Worker, I'm sure Newsweek doesn't appear liberal to you.

[MouthFountain]

01:35 PM on 01/18/2009

Good luck with that! The Economist is conservative, but extremely well written and informative with little gloss. It is one of my favorite magazines. But, Americans don't read a whole hell of a lot anymore.

The Economist may be thought of as conservative, but frankly I like reading thoughtful material. They are most definitely not Bush conservatives.

[MurrayAbraham]

03:31 PM on 01/18/2009

Agreed. And there reporting on non economical issues is more neutral than anything you can find in the US. (They can be absolutely brutal towards conservatives when they betray public interests, just ask Berlusconi.)

[Tenley]

12:47 PM on 01/18/2009

Weeklies would be great vehicles for telling long-term stories -- reform efforts, the story of Obama's administration, etc. They can't break news -- it's ancient. And recaps are ancient now too. They can be marketplaces for ideas. But what's really missing in the media world right now is an outlet where long-term important stories can be told.

[NoSillyName]

12:41 PM on 01/18/2009

Anybody like "The Week"? Brief, concise roundup of world events. No editorializing.

[ThePhilosopher]

12:37 PM on 01/18/2009

It's a good move if done correctly; if you're going to try to imitate another news magazine, The Economist is the best you can imitate. Now, I don't always agree with The Economist's political positions but the magazine, unlike TIME and others, is very, very well written and researched; news articles in The Economist go deeper and provide far more detail and good analysis than TIME or Newsweek. The Economist also pays a lot of attention to global news stories; every issue has multiple articles on happenings in Africa, South America and Asia, something we rarely see in American news magazines. So, while you may not agree with The Economist's positions, the depth of its analysis is certainly something worth aspiring to.

[x004Ronin]

12:12 PM on 01/18/2009

The Economist magazine is not perfect, but I enjoy it for its breadth, brevity, and its mostly libertarian stance.
They came out with an issue titled, "The Case for Gay Marriage" a few years ago, for example.
I also enjoy it because in their issue in which they endorsed Obama, they talked about his negative qualities. In reading the New York Times endorsement of Obama, you would think the man is perfect (I'm an enthusiastic Obama supporter who KNOWS he's not perfect).
My personal favorite: The Economist wrote an opinion piece talking about Sarah Palin Republicans titled, "The Party of Stupid." No other news publication had the guts to call BS - they were too busy pretending Palin was somewhat qualified in order to maintain access to the McCain campaign - Remember the, "We'll let her do interviews when the press is ready to show her deference" line?

[CFAmick]

10:55 AM on 01/18/2009

Good, because Time and Newsweek are silly and condescending.

[swift goat pet for truth]

02:02 PM on 01/19/2009

They are supermarket tabloids.

[readmewell22]

10:46 AM on 01/18/2009

Catering to the Elite? How many are those will be left during harsh economic times like these? Really?
How stupid!

[swift goat pet for truth]

02:02 PM on 01/19/2009

So, Elite = informed?

[RODERICK098]

10:31 AM on 01/18/2009

The so-called Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Issikof said the Clintons were up to no good in Whitewater and he was proved wrong. I stopped buying Newsweek after that realizing it was very unreliable.The other two 'winners'they have at that rag are Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman. One evening they were discussing why Hillary got such bad press and Mr. Fineman I believe said that her people were not nice to the press. My comeback to this -We,the public, want the press to report the truth on a candidate and be fair to that candidate -. Whether their press people were nice to you or not should not even enter the picture. They both wreaked of smugness and sense of privilege -two qualities reporters should not have.Newsweek would have to fire all three of these gentlemen before I would ever buy a copy of the magazine again.

[x004Ronin]

12:08 PM on 01/18/2009

Exactly. If the Clinton people didn't buy the reporters donuts, I don't want that to lead them to write nasty articles about Hillary. That isn't how journalism is supposed to work.

[blurredtruth]

10:21 AM on 01/18/2009

Agree, too late. The media has no creditability now anyway courtesy of who they backed. There are no believable changes.

[NoSillyName]

12:32 PM on 01/18/2009

You might want to get some Windex. Always helps clear up that blur.

[RandomMandarin]

09:01 AM on 01/18/2009

The Economist is like five Newsweeks in one cover, with real sections on every part of the world, and very little filler. It also seems to contain a smaller percentage of ads. How could Newsweek become that?

Mother Jones, Utne Reader, In These Times, New Yorker, Harper's. Read those.

[GJR227]

08:39 AM on 01/18/2009

Condi Rice Memoirs title : "If My Lips Were Moving, I Was Lying".

[lex811]

07:25 AM on 01/18/2009

too late.