Is the web a panacea for troubled publications? Well, they say hope springs eternal, and so it does in the case of U.S. News & World Report, according to the Washingtonian:
U.S. News & World Report, the perennial third among the newsmagazines, is trying to become the first to exploit the Internet. It’s also trying to be among the first of the mainstream media outlets to hitch its fortunes to the shaky engine of Web economics.
A reading of the magazine’s internal memos, examination of its recent layoffs, and interviews with editors make it clear the weekly is betting on profits from its Internet ventures to prop up the magazine’s failing fortunes.
“Our Web business is really exploding,� says editor Brian Duffy.
But its print business is suffering. U.S. News is so slim some weeks that it seems to be shrinking to newsletter size. So far this year, its ad revenue have fallen off. And many of the ads it runs are not high-quality paid pages but instead the type of ads where the magazine is paid by the number of customer inquiries generated.
“You have to be an idiot not to see the changes roiling the business,� says Duffy. “The Web for us is a growth business.�
Actually, that U.S. News & World Report is struggling isn’t a monster news story.
It has long been the third-in-place news magazine. In the late 1970s, when TMV returned from writing for various newspapers from New Delhi and Madrid, he visited U.S. News for a job interview. Even at that time, when it was a healthier publication, there was talk that the magazine was going to undergo some big changes. It was later sold. (TMV later worked at the Knight-Ridder chain’s newspaper in Wichita, Kansas and after that on the Copley chain’s flagship newspaper here in San Diego).
But it just isn’t the web that must be hurting U.S. News.
It’s the fact that it now has some highly interesting competition — a publication call The Week, which is absolutely addictive. Just check their website out. Most news stories about U.S. news don’t mention how The Week came up with a different concept for a news magazine that makes it a perfect choice to read with ANOTHER news magazine. These aren’t happy times for U.S. News:
Last week U.S. News laid off some ten staffers, including star political writer Roger Simon. Meanwhile, publisher Mortimer Zuckerman has invested more than $2 million in the magazine’s Internet ventures and hired producers to run the Web sites.
For veteran reporters and editors, the magazine’s change of focus has been painful and unsettling. They have endured cuts in salary and benefits, rumors about job security, and demands for more production. The magazine’s formula on the journalistic front is more words for more platforms from fewer writers.
The formula for the Web is based on the hope that the U.S. News brand, which has been successful in rating colleges, will have similar success rating hospitals and healthcare plans.
Etc.
The bottom line is: the New York Times has begun charging for some of its content on its website now. The Wall Street Journal does it. A few weeks ago there were stories about The Christian Science Monitor’s problems with its print publication.
Some print publications are hurting and going to the web. Even small ones. Newsy Vents, a publication for ventriloquists (TMV knows these things) ended a nearly 30 year run…but has now reappeared in the form of a great vent-related weblog…better than ever.
Still, the fact is that the jury is still out on whether web versions of publications can easily displace the print ones — or if the future will see trimmed-down staffs putting most of their efforts into a web edition and producing perfunctory print editions to keep the brand name alive as more than just a web product.
Meanwhile, U.S. News and World report’s status as an also-ran in the newsmagazine journalism and finances continues….an increasingly web-dominated world….with a spirited newcomer that’s giving it a run for its money as the alternative to Time and Newsweek.