Newsweekly magazines have been in the news of late – and not for good reasons. Newsweek’s mounting losses forced its owner, the Washington Post Company, to put it on the block. One of Newsweek’s rumored suitors – Mort Zuckerman – owns U.S. News, a newsweekly that’s not even weekly anymore. (Last year, the magazine shifted to biweekly frequency.)
Two titles have managed to buck the category’s downward trend: the Economist, which Newsweek editor Jon Meacham said they modeled the magazine’s relaunch on; and The Week. TheWrap spoke with Steven Kotok, The Week’s general manager, about the state of newsweeklies, print success and why they’re in no rush to develop an iPad version.
The decline of the newsweekly category is well documented. But The Week and the Economist appear to be bucking that trend. How is The Week doing it?
What we’ve done is we’ve been building a business around an editorial product that was built in 2001 and not 1951. We didn’t identify a lucrative ad market and figure out what product to launch to tap into it – like a Portfolio or something. We have a large subscription revenue stream and readers who are engaged with the editorial, and ad agencies pay for that. It’s really been a killer app for us. The Web has led people to think of ROI and engagement, and that’s an area where we really excel and have been able to offer advertisers unique packages.
What have you done specifically to boost your circulation and advertising the last two years?
It’s interesting. In the last four years we’ve put a lot more concentration, creativity and money into increasing the amount of money we get from out current readers, rather than grow out circulation. In that time we’ve doubled our circulation revenue but grown our subscriptions 25 percent. We’re selling subscriptions at a higher price, and keeping the size where it is. Because when you start factoring things in like postage and printing, it’s not a viable strategy for us.
Last year you made a guarantee to some advertisers that readers will remember an ad in its pages more than ads in its rivals. How did that work out?
It’s been great. We only offer it to advertisers who buy a good size schedule. A lot of advertisers who come in for the first time, they’re more comfortable and they buy increased packages because of it. We’re taking some of the risk out, and they like that. We’re saying “You’re definitely paying this amount, you’re scheduled to run X, but we’ll make sure you recoup that investment, and make it whole.” It takes out the risk.
You’ve admitted The Week – like many magazines – had trouble translating what it does in print on the Web. Despite this, your traffic has grown to 1.5 million unique visitors a month, almost five-fold in a year.
