If you hadn’t heard, Newsweek will soon stop printing.
As a small, weekly newspaper publisher, I know the challenges facing print. And I considered writing a three-point post on the major things Newsweek had done wrong.
But, four came to mind off the top of my head.
So, here are my top four reasons why Newsweek is going out of print.
So, I’m guessing putting ridiculous covers on your publication that pisses off 50 percent of your readers, then turning around and pissing off the other 50 percent is probably a bad strategy.
Noted. And good riddance.
Now if we could get rid of about another dozen media outlets that are over-the-top and constantly blowing things out of proportion and stirring up fear and hatred.
Stan R. Mitchell
Oak Ridge, Tenn.
P.S. Please accept the greatest gift I can give.
I don’t read Newsweek, and I thought those covers you posted were jokes at first. Yeah, talk about alienating readers.
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Hah! I hadn’t considered that some people may think those covers were jokes…
That just goes to show how bad and misguided they were. Anyway, for the record, those covers ARE NOT jokes. They each actually ran, and caused huge controversy.
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Remember, these are the same people who objected to MBA’s running their business; they might have considered keeping one or two around to remind them that it’s generally a bad idea to piss off large segments of your target market. The Internet has put the magazines out of business, the same way that it crushed newspapers and radio, and good riddance.
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Agreed, John. I just hope my wife and I are able to make our local newspaper different from the others in a good way, and that the public and business community continues to support us as they have to date.
Ultimately, I think people want a good newspaper, but they don’t want one that’s biased or over-the-top.
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Hopefully the internet won’t run all of the magazines out of business. While I do get a lot of my news, information, entertainment, etc. off of the web, I still enjoy holding printed material in my hand, be it magazines or newspaper. And the problem with Newsweek and others is the obvious slant, politically and socially. Just report the story, I can figure out the rest.
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I agree. I like paper, too.
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I refused to renew my subscription to Newsweek about 6 months ago after being a subscriber for some 40 years! I could no longer take their political bias, their heavy use of columnists whose opinions I cared little about, and their lack news analysis. I was less offended by the covers than by what was or wasn’t between the covers. So I agree with you, Stan–Good riddance!. If you want a first-rate weekly news magazine, I recommend The Economist.
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Agreed, Peter. I haven’t subscribed to The Economist in a couple of years, but that’s a great, great magazine.
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Gee and I thought drama was what sold copies. I am going to forward this to a few friends, thanks for the post! Keep up the good work! Dave
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Thanks, Dave! Maybe — please, please maybe — folks are getting tired of the over-the-top drama! With luck, this will be the first of many that count on drama to fall.
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I’d noticed that Newsweek had seriously shrunk. The only part I’ll miss is Fahreed Zakaria (sp?), who wrote the mid-East perspective. I still take The New Yorker and find it -as always- the best general mish-mash mag there is.
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Fahreed Zakaria was great. That’s a fact.
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Just think. People got paid good money to come up with those covers. Other people got paid good money to approve them.
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So true, as shocking as it seems…
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And when it went to the publishers, someone was thinking, “We sure did a good job on that one!”…
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Yep, Mike. You’re right. That’s the scary part.
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