Is The Week challenging Time and Newsweek?

For those of us who follow the fortunes of The Week with an admiring eye there’s a piece worth reading today by John Friedman of MarketWatch in New York.

Basically he is saying that with a circulation pushing 500,000 The Week in the US is threatening Time and Newsweek. An amazing achievement.

The Week formula is driving strong growth at sustainable cost while the Time/Newsweek model is increasingly tired and uninspiring - especially to the people that work there.

Steve Kotok, The Week’s US General Manager says:

My feeling is that The Week starts with what a busy, sophisticated person needs to be well-informed — which we believe is multiple perspectives on today’s current events. And we keep it to just that, and no more, because people today are busy. And because of our reader focus, our readers read every issue.

Isn’t that a pretty good description of what the web is supposed to provide? All the time and for free, what’s more.

And yet a grubby old printed magazine that is perpetually out of date seems to be doing really well.

It doesn’t surprise me at all but it must confound some of the media gurus that I meet.

Add comment April 28th, 2008