U.S. News & World Report Cuts Rate Base and Frequency
The move is another in a long series of major adjustments by the newsweeklies.
The newsweekly category continues to churn. U.S. News & World Report is the latest to lop a chunk of rate base as well as cut frequency. The magazine adjusted rate base from 2 million to 1.5 million and frequency from 46 issues to 36, according to a Mediaweek report in late April.
The magazine declined to comment at presstime. Nevertheless, over the last few years, the category as a whole has been under constant change as the three big magazines (Time, Newsweek and U.S. News) re-engineer themselves in an attempt to stabilize a rocky market.
Time and Newsweek have both gone through their own rate base reductions. Time was the first to go in early 2007, cutting from 4 million to 3.25 million. Newsweek followed later that year, trimming 16 percent to 2.6 million.
And the changes didn’t stop there. Time went on to shift its on-sale date from Monday to Friday, boost its newsstand price by $1, and significantly redesign both the magazine and Web site.
The actions reflected the impact the Internet has had on the category, and how the publishers have struggled in taming the dynamic between the print and digital products, leading Time’s managing editor Richard Stengel to comment at the 2008 DMA Circulation Day event earlier this year: “There’s no news that breaks in print anymore. Print takes the facts and adds insight. Online is for the ‘what’ and print is for the ‘why’. The magazine puts it in context and that’s why we see them as complementary brands.”
Newsweek also unveiled a redesign of both the magazine and Web site around the time it cut its rate base. “Some people in our business believe print should emulate the Internet, filling pages with short, Weblike bites of information,” wrote editor Jon Meacham in his editor’s note to announce the redesign. “We disagree. There is a simple idea behind the changes in the issue of Newsweek you are holding: we are betting that you want to read more, not less.”
As for U.S. News & World Report, this latest move is another in a series of changes for the print product. In 2005, U.S. News president Bill Holiber announced a strategic shift away from print to focus more on Web business, giving print room to provide more analysis—and letting Time and Newsweek fight for a broader readership. “At times it may come across as being not the most exciting product, but it’s a very well-thought-out, information-driven product. As we move in this direction, I think you’ll see more information on the page. I think Time and Newsweek are battling it out, trying to be all things to all people. They want to be big—very, very big. We’ve found there’s a certain type of consumer we attract, and that’s who we’re focusing on: ‘Give me the facts, I’ll decide.’”
However, with the appointment of Brian Kelly to editor a year ago, the magazine has moved decidedly in the direction of more service journalism, ramping up its production of “Best-of” issues.
And, interestingly, it’s turned out that no one wants to be very, very big anymore.
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