U.S. News & World Report down, Time & Newsweek to go?

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/06/business/media/06mag.html

U.S. News & World Report to End Monthly Publication

By JEREMY W. PETERS

Published: November 5, 2010

U.S. News & World Report, once part of the triumvirate of newsweeklies but reduced now to a spare monthly, will print its last issue for subscribers in December.

Its news content will now exist exclusively and free on the Web, though the magazine will still publish eight single issues a year.

The move is the culmination of a long process inside U.S. News to gradually de-emphasize the printed magazine and shift focus to its highly influential and profitable rankings guides for institutions like colleges and hospitals.

U.S. News had been scaled back in stages as the economics of publishing each week became too challenging. It went from printing once a week to twice monthly in 2008. Just five months later, it switched to once a month. Now it will cease to exist as readers know it.

The decision signals a desire by U.S. News and its owner, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, to get out of the magazine subscription business. News — in the conventional who-what-when-where-why sense — will no longer be a part of U.S. News in print. All that will remain of the venerable magazine will be the guidebooks and single-topic issues that will be for sale only on newsstands.

“Our emphasis on rankings and research content is the right path, making us an essential information source,” said a memo to U.S. News staff from the editor, Brian Kelly, and president, William D. Holiber. “We can’t sit still,” the memo added.

Mr. Kelly said in an interview that he did not expect the changes would translate into any more layoffs, which have shrunk the staff considerably over the years. “For us, this is a growth move,” he said.

The printed magazine has essentially been filled by freelance writers and occasional contributions from the staff since a reorganization earlier this year that shifted reporters’ primary responsibility to USNews.com. The magazine and the Web site have existed separately, each with its own budgets and editors. There was little news content left in the magazine, which has lately been dedicated to single topics like public service.

The decision to end subscriptions eliminates the high cost of printing and mailing out a magazine each month, which is always one of the biggest expenses at a magazine.

“Print was the form that served a purpose,” Mr. Kelly said. “And for us, it doesn’t anymore. That doesn’t mean there isn’t lots for us to do.”

The magazine’s circulation has been nearly cut in half over the last five years, falling to 1.1 million during the first six months of this year from more than two million in 2005. U.S. News’s troubles are the most extreme example of the problems to befall the traditional newsweeklies, which have watched their influence, circulation and revenue decline as the news cycle evolved into a perpetual, 24/7 marathon to produce and consume information.

Newsweek, which sold for $1 to the stereo equipment mogul Sidney Harman this year, now prints 1.6 million issues a week, down from 3.2 million five years ago.

Time is the largest traditional newsweekly, with a circulation of just over three million, down from four million five years ago.

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I still like to read with a magazine, book or newspaper in my hand, although some magazines are more fun to read with something in the other hand.

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I still like to read with a magazine, book or newspaper in my hand, although some magazines are more fun to read with something in the other hand.

Poor Bob Guccione. He died so young!

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Poor Bob Guccione. He died so young!

He saw his empire crumble with the advent of internet porn. Everything is going digital.