News Magazines Try to Reinvent ... Again!

In Friday's edition of The Wall Street Journal, the paper highlighted the ever evolving news magazine genre as it, like many other "traditional" media, seek to figure out how to maintain relevance in a digital age (What's Next for Magazines). The challenges of the news industry is a common discussion, no doubt because companies like Washington Post Co. (parent of Newsweek) and Time Warner (parent of Time) and other news sources are struggling to find the winning formula.

One global magazine brand, The Economist, is bucking the trend with advertising up 8.5% over 2006, while Time and Newsweek saw 6+% drops in ad rates while subscriptions remained flat. Newsweek just offered 150 buyouts of employees, most of them older journalists, replacing some (but certainly not all) with younger "voices" who cost less, as Newsweek editor Jon Meacham says. The question is, will this type of shuffling and cost cutting and reinventing be enough? Mr. Meacham seems less than convinced.

The April 4 Journal piece concluded with this:

At a recent speech at Columbia University, Mr. Meacham delivered a blistering response after he asked who reads Newsweek and none of the 100-odd students in attendance raised their hands.

"It's an incredible frustration that I've got some of the most decent, hard-working, honest, passionate, straight-shooting, non-ideological people who just want to tell the damn truth, and how to get this past this image that we're just middlebrow, you know, a magazine that your grandparents get, or something, that's the challenge," Mr. Meacham said. "And I just don't know how to do it, so if you've got any ideas, tell me."

I think we'd all like to know.