Does the Departure of Tina Brown from the Daily Beast Portend a Less-Than-Rosy Future for Online-Only Journalism?

The news that Tina Brown is leaving the Daily Beast, the online-only news site she founded in 2008 isn't big news, outside of Manhattan. The fact is that the Daily Beast wasn't getting much attention in the first place. Even with the merger of Newsweek's reporters and content, the site sometimes known as News-Beast has been less successful than the Huffington Post or the less serious BuzzFeed.

Its web traffic dropped 15.4 percent in August to 5.6 million unique views, according to a Wall St. Journal article about Brown's departure.

In Manhattan publishing circles, there had been a cult of Tina based on her tremendous success as the former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, but less success on TV and, now, online.

But the news of Brown's departure should be considered big news not because of Brown but because of what it says about the possible future of online journalism. I find it interesting that no has (yet) has declared the online-only model of journalism to be dead.

After all, the common wisdom is that print journalism is dead or at least dying, that it's difficult and expensive and outdated to publish news on paper, and that the answer is online-only journalism.

The fact is that online journalism is much tougher than many realize. Let's face it, 5.6 million unique viewers can be more than the numbers of viewers tuning in to some network or cable shows -- so the challenges isn't just finding an audience.

It's generating enough revenue.

Since most people expect news to be free, raising revenue is a big problem -- for online-only as well as print journalism. Perhaps even more so for online-only because print can charge subscription fees more easily (you don't expect to walk up to a newsstand and walk away with a copy of the New York Times without paying for it) and print can charge higher ad rates, too.

My point: having an online-only business model is not a guaranteed formula for success -- and neither is having a print component a surefire path to failure. What's important is the point of view, the value of the journalism that you can offer your readers, and in turn attract the kinds of readers that draw significant advertising dollars.

By the way, the merger with Newsweek was not successful, and while I do think the Newsweek merger was a distraction to running the Daily Beast, I believe that with or without Newsweek, the Daily Beast was always on the same trajectory.

What Can We Learn From the Possible Merger of Salon

The news that Salon.com is looking for a possible partner, "Who Wants to Buy Salon.com? Anyone?" raises some interesting points about online media's business, namely:

• It's not only print media that can generate million-dollar annual losses. Salon has lost $15 million over the last five years, including an estimated $5 million in 2010.
• Driven by the need to generate the revenues necessary to sustain a journalistic operation, Salon is shifting its coverage from politics and news to softer, shorter lifestyle coverage. The problem: we already have a lot of sources for lifestyle news while we have fewer sources for traditional news coverage.
  
• Standalone media properties can't hope to compete against media conglomerates -- even today. That's the lesson, too, to be drawn from the recent Newsweek-Daily Beast merger.

On the other hand, the FT recently scored a success with its iPad app subscription, "Financial Times iPad app scores success: Paper increasing its digital-only subscription base at a rate of about 500 a week, with strong growth in US," according its competitor, The Guardian. But while that's good news, it's still not self-sustaining.

One thing for sure, 2011 will continue to see pressure on traditional and online media.

Do We Still Need General-Interest Newsweeklies?

One of the reactions to the news that Newsweek will combine with The Daily Beast was coming up with a new joint name for the two money-losing-but-worthwhile publications.

In Newsweek Weds Daily Beast? Good Luck, The New York Times' David Carr clearly doesn't think that marriage can be saved. The print edition of the Times called the new combined outlet NewsBeast.

Which is better than the name that really symbolizes the problem: The DailyWeek.

Or the actual name of the new parent company, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company.

Given the estimated combined $35,5 million in estimated annual loses of the two combined companies, the more serious question is: do we still need general-interest newsweeklies?

Or, in blogese: 2010: The Year Newsweeklies Died. (That's because I see so many blog posts claiming something else we've all used has died, like email, press releases, etc.)

I actually don't think press releases have died, and I think email will be replaced by texting among people 28+ (those under 28 don't use email).

But I do think the age of the general-interest newsweekly has passed. Time is still around, but its circulation is half of what is was at the start of this century. US News is fading away. And while the print edition of Newsweek seems likely to continue -- for now -- its online version, Newsweek.com, will be shut down in order to drive traffic to the Daily Beast.

The only newsweekly that appears to be doing well is The Economist. I also like Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The New York Times' Week in Review section, that is published on Sundays. But neither The Economist nor Bloomberg BusinessWeek are general interest publications -- they're designed as overviews for people interested in business. There are some other weeklies, but they seem to have a specific political perspective (which puts them into a different category from general interest).

Yes, I know there are lots of other weekly magazines...like People, US, etc. -- but those are celebrity and entertainment publications, not general interest. Since we live in an age that seems obsessed with celebrities (including those whose names are known even if they seem to have no real discernible talent), I don't think the death of the general-interest newsweekly will impact People, US or the others.

In the end, I think it's difficult for readers to justify subscriptions to a general-interest newsweekly -- and difficult for advertisers to justify advertising in them unless they want to target an older demographic.

Meanwhile, the people behind a SaveNewsweek.com campaign -- seems like Newsweek.com staffers or former staffers, makes the following worthwhile points:

• What will be the ramifications for Newsweek’s Web presence in terms of SEO? For branding? For our partnerships with MSNBC and MSN? What happens to Newsweek’s (still-unleveraged) archives? How do you preserve a “national treasure” (as Harman has called it) without a Web presence bearing its name?
• By rolling Newsweek.com into The Daily Beast, the hope—at least according to the Times—would be to absorb the some of the 5 million unique visitors Newsweek clocks each month. But at least 60 percent of those visitors come in through the back door, through Newsweek’s partnership with MSNBC, links on MSN, Newsweek’s Twitter feed, its Tumblr, and elsewhere. If less than half of Newsweek readers log onto Newsweek.com’s actual homepage, how much traffic will really be gained? Certainly not five million uniques.

What do you think? Are newsweeklies dead yet or just going to evolve?

Newsweek Evaluates Time Magazine's Paywall: Some Good Points

In summary, the Newsweek article looks objective enough: "Evaluating Time Magazine's New Online Pay Wall."

But when you click on the link, the headline changes to: "In Which Time Inc. Rides on the Wall of Death One More Time."

I've seen more objective headlines on the Drudge Report -- and is an example of how headline writers can ruin an article.

The article is actually reasonable and focuses on three good points:

• First, make the sell clear, and the transaction frictionless.
• Second, define a better value proposition.
• Third, remember that people will pay for value.

Check out the article here. Just ignore the headline.

Interesting Fact about Newsweek's Twitter Feed

It's worth noting: that the cost of publishing a print version of Newsweek is why the Washington Post sold the mag basically for nothing.

Yet the number of people who follow Newsweek on Twitter is 1,260,755 -- almost the equivalent number to its circulation of 1.5 million. Clearly not all subscribers (I'm thinking here of medical offices) also follow Newsweek on Twitter.

So it's clear demand for Newsweek remains stable. Well, the demand for free access to Newsweek remains stable.

But online-only is not a viable long-term solution.

Newsweek Goes in for the Kill

I remember a Time when Newsweeklies were timely and relevant and some even gave US the World. (Clearly though perhaps not so cleverly, I'm referring to the Time, Newsweek and US News & World Report.)

There was always some amount of difference among the three, but not usually that much difference. They all had to address whatever big news story hit a few days earlier. Now the difference among them is greater even as the need for each has diminished, based on circulation anyway.

Back to the headline. Headlines are often written by someone other than the actual reporter. The reporter writes the slug -- the working title of the piece -- while a different editor writes the headline when the piece is ready.

Whoever edits the tech headlines at Newsweek needs a vacation. Or a better thesaurus. Check out these recent headlines:

• Apple Kills Again, Sept. 1, 2010
• Why the Google-Verizon Deal Won't Kill You, Aug. 15, 2010
• Why the iPad Hasn't Killed Kindle, July 26, 2010
• Does Apple's iPhone 4 Signal the Death of the Macintosh?, June 8, 2010

That's quite a killing spree!

Having the magazine be offered up for sale and then sold for less than the newsstand price of a signle issue (I know -- the new owner has taken on the assumption of debt), is bound to make anyone cranky.

But it's time that the killing stopped.

Newsweek & New York Times Validate Another of Our Predictions

In Feb. 2010, we published our annual list of trends and predictions for the year. As part of our Prediction #5: The Top Dozen Business & Technology Stories in 2010 Will Include... we said one of the top stories would be "The freelancing of the US workforce -- or how we'll all be contractors or 'perma-temps' in the future (especially given the jobless nature of the recovery)."

In an article in June 2010, Newsweek ran an interesting article that validated the above prediction: "The Vanishing 9-to-5 Job: How the recession is accelerating a cultural shift in the corporate world toward more flexible workdays." And on Sept. 1, the New York Times ran an
article, "New Job Means Lower Wages for Many" that looked at the impact of a lack of steady jobs.

Keep in mind that the point of the trends is to identify story angles the media will be working on for the oncoming year, and then developing approaches to get clients into those stories.

Meanwhile, in the same list of top business and tech stories we expected to see, we predicted a lot of attention paid to "Google vs. Apple vs. Microsoft and EMC vs. HP vs. Oracle." We've been right about part of that: Google vs. Apple has been a big story, bigger than Google vs. Microsoft.
(Check out It's Apple vs. Google in the New Phone Fight, that appeared in Newsweek in June.) But there's a version of that we missed on: Dell vs HP (fighting Over 3Par). Can't get 'em all.

As always, we'll do a recap at the end of the year to determine how well we did overall with our list, breaking out the trends we got right and the ones that we did not.

Will Newsweek Survive?

Newsweeklies used to hold an important place in our society. People would read their daily paper, then wait for the analysis from Time or Newsweek.

A key word was "wait."

If people get impatient for downloads to their smartphones (as compared to the former wait we had for dial-up service to connect), waiting four days for a printed magazine to appear is endless.

That's a big problem for just about every weekly still be published. The one exception: The Economist, which is doing quite well, actually, publishing global economic and political news.

I think the latest (I prefer not to say "last") redesign of Newsweek was intended to mimic The Economist.

Unfortunately, that didn't work. And now Newsweek is on the block.

Check out two of David Carr's interesting New York Times columns about the fate of Newsweek, "A Cultural Artifact, on the Block" and "Changing the Course at Newsweek."

Can Newsweek's Redesign Boost Its Prospects?

Magazines love to redesign themselves -- seeing the revamp as a way to update the look-and-feel of the outlet as well as its mission.

The latest example is Newsweek, which David Carr at the New York Times calls "Fourth-and-Long Journalism at Newsweek."

Carr notes that the redesigned Newsweek "will no longer attempt to re-report and annotate the week's events -- an expensive, unsustainable approach to making a weekly news magazine." Newsweek is going to focus on reporting on inside the Beltway, serving as a non-partisan voice against a cacophony of partisan print and blog voices. Additionally, Newsweek will not cover breaking news -- as it used to do -- but that it will do so if Newsweek is "truly adding to the conversation," according to Jon Meacham, Newsweek's editor.

In an editor’s note about a redesign of the magazine, Meacham wrote, “As the number of news outlets expands, it is said, attention spans shrink; only the fast and the pithy will survive.”

Meacham's right. The question is will this redesign enable Newsweek to survive.

For PR functions, the evolving role of newsweeklies including Time & US News means that the way we reach out to them, if at all now, has to evolve as well.

Newsweeklies...And Then There Was One...

“News has become a commodity. They already know the news. We’re not in the business of telling people the news,” Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time, told the New York Times' Richard Perez-Pena.

Very startling acknowledgment.

According to the article, "The Popular Newsweekly Becomes a Lonely Category," "Newsweek may be poised to" make substantial changes this year: "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."

Here's some further analysis by Perez-Pena:

Unable to compete with the immediacy of television, cable and then the Internet, newsmagazines have been moving for decades in the direction of analysis, commentary and news-related feature articles. That trend has accelerated in recent years, driven by financial pressures. The magazines’ editorial staffs are about half as big as they were in the 1990s, and they have shuttered many of the bureaus they once had around the world.

They still produce some deep, original reporting. But these days, they are more likely to offer a comprehensive survey of a subject to present an argument or offer a prescription — like Newsweek’s recent cover article on why President-elect Barack Obama may come to embrace Vice President Dick Cheney’s view of executive power, or Time’s on how a trillion-dollar stimulus package should be spent.

Thoughts on Thoughtcasting

N'Gai Croal had an interesting column in Newsweek, "Thoughtcasting: U R So Vain: Twitter and Tumblr make it so easy to publish whatever's on my mind, they started to seduce me into actually doing so."

He asks a question more of us -- including myself -- should ask: "Just because I can publish my every thought, does it mean that I should?"

He also asked his "followers" -- a grandiose and inaccurate term, I think -- about what sort of things are appropriate, and got the following responses:

• "Things I would talk about on my blog."
• "Anything I can be seen to be doing in public."
• "Things that wouldn't disqualify me from running for public office."
• "The Mom test ... would I want my mom seeing it or not."

"I'm still figuring out this thoughtcasting stuff," Croal writes, "but Mom and common sense sound like a good place to start."

I agree.

Wall St. Journal looks at "what's next for newsmagazines?"

In a Wall St. Journal report on changes affecting major U.S. newsweeklies, here are some interesting take-aways:

• Time and Newsweek are trying "to reinvent themselves yet again.
• About a year ago, Time redesigned the print and website versions of the magazine. Richard Stengel, editor, told the Journal, "My whole view was there's more information out there than in human history. What people don't need more of is information. They need a guide through the chaos."
  
• Newsweek, on the other hand, is increasing the quotient of serious news.
• At 4M and 3.1M, respectively, Time's and Newsweek's circulation level have been flat. (An optimist might say, "is holding steady.")
• The article says that Time & Newsweek suffer from Economist envy, since that international magazine saw an increase in ad pages.
• The fact that Time & Newsweek are suffering (Newsweek's buyout offer to 150 staffers is the article's newshook) reinforces the point made in earlier posts: U.S. magazines subsidize circulation through advertising; in other words: 4M circulation is great, but it doesn't pay all the bills. Advertising does. When advertising suffers, so too does editorial.
  
• And what you may ask of U.S. News & World Report? Tellingly, despite spending nearly a 1000 words on the newsweekly category, the Journal does not mention U.S. News & World Report.