Newsweek to cut paid circulation

Falling revenue, the rising cost of postage as well as reduced paid advertisements have prompted Newsweek magazine, owned by the Washington Post Co., to cut paid circulation by 16 percent, equaling about 500,000 copies.

Newsweek cited rising postal and other costs in explaining its decision, according to a media buyer who has been briefed on the plan. “Obviously people are also migrating online for news and information,” said the buyer. “It’s hard to maintain current subscribers and attract new subscribers.”

Newsweek is but one of a number of publications that has decided to cut circulation in recent months. Newsweek’s largest competitor, Time magazine, cut its base earlier this year as well as others such as Playboy, Reader’s Digest and BusinessWeek.

New model for the Magazine? BusinessWeek thinks so…

The fully re-designed, re-developed BusinessWeek magazine is set to launch this week. Bruce Nussbaum explains the new layout and content in his article, “Business Week Reinvents The Magazine–Make Way For Curating The Conversation Through Aggregation, Briefings, And Story-Telling.”

We’re introducing this type of open source aggregation into the new magazine, with blog items, quotes, and content from unusual, global sources surrounding stories, sometimes enhancing them, sometimes disagreeing with them. It’s a conversation, not a lecture.

If all goes as planned, could this really be the new model for the magazine publishing industry? Could the introduction of narrative and “conversational” content provide the link between web and print? If it works for BusinessWeek, and others within the magazine industry in the future, could a model like this work for newspapers as well?