Sunday, November 7, 2010
ZUCKERMAN UNPUBLISHED: U.S. News and World Report, the once-weekly magazine best known for its various Rankings issues, is ditching all the magazine stuff to just do occasional Rankings publications. According to AdAge, its circulation was 1.1 million this year, which raises a question -- who was still reading it anyway?
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<span>who was still reading it anyway?</span>
ReplyDeleteLaw school deans and career services officers.
who was still reading it anyway?
ReplyDeleteYour less fashionable dental and medical offices. Buying it, at least.
<span>who was still reading it anyway? </span>
ReplyDelete<span>The </span><span>overbearing </span><span> parents of soon-to-be college students, as well as people who put far too much pride in the rankings of their alma mater.</span>
<span>who was still reading it anyway?</span>
ReplyDeletePeople sneaking peeks in bookstores or in grocery store lines to see what their schools are ranked.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Newsweek/USNews/Time left over from my days as a high school debater and extemper -- those were the Big Three for assembling speeches, so I read them all dutifully every week for four straight years.
ReplyDeleteI think you can broaden the question: Who is still reading any print newsweekly these days for the news and/or news analysis? Who still subscribes out of anything other than a desire to take advantage of a Publishers' Clearing House type deal?
ReplyDeleteI haven't done either in years -- I suppose there may be some essayists/columnists in Time or Newsweek whose work might be worth waiting for at your mailbox, but I'd be surprised if the stats showed that such consumption hasn't largely shifted to the Internet too. (Cautionary tale: TV Guide.)
Came here to say exactly that. For years now, medical offices have been the only places I've looked at news magazines. But now that I have a smartphone, I don't even look at them there, and just surf the web while I wait instead. Makes me wonder -- will doctors' offices even have magazines 5 or 10 years from now, or will that be something added eventually to that Beloit College list ("most students entering college this year have never read a magazine in a doctor's office")?
ReplyDeleteThat accounts for a couple of issues, but who was subscribing for the entire year?
ReplyDeleteMy husband reads The Economist for news analysis. But otherwise, I completely agree.
ReplyDeleteWhat Genevieve said.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's The Week for a good overview of international stories.
ReplyDeleteAlso, their doctors will all be robots.
ReplyDeleteYou're neglecting the population that gets a free newsmagazine subscription for donating to NPR.
ReplyDeleteThe New Yorker's cartoons are an effective barrier to smart phone and Kindle subscriptions. Don't know about the people who spent $500-600 on an iPad.
ReplyDeleteYup - I've gotten Newsweek intermittently for years due to paying my NPR pledge on a credit card. Glanced through it here and there, but it's mostly useless these days.
ReplyDelete<span><span>who was still reading it anyway?</span></span>
ReplyDeleteMy guess is a lot of those subscriptions were libraries. Because no one wants to buy it, but lots want to at least peek at the rankings.
Yeah, I'd say that The New Yorker is in a different category (anyone who reads The New Yorker for current news is... misguided). Also, I just re-upped on The New Republic (biweekly now) after a 4 or 5 year hiatus, because I found myself buying enough issues that it just made more sense to subscribe. (Say what you will about its politics -- it's got some great book reviews and long-form essays.) The Economist is different too, because what layperson keeps current on project finance in Ossetia on a daily basis? But "I need to read Time to find out what happened in the last week" seems pretty passe, even for old geezers.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's when all hell will break loose in Washington from the bitter and divisive debates over Robot Insurance Reform.
ReplyDeleteIf this works out for them, next the NY Daily News is going to stop publishing except for Yankees Special Editions.
ReplyDeleteBecause robots are strong, and eat old people's medicine for fuel.<span> </span>
ReplyDeleteI still subscribe to Newsweek because:
ReplyDeleteA) I find it an easy way to keep vaguely current on what the hell is going on in the world. OK, the U.S.
B) I do most of my reading on the train, and can't abide reading anything more than a page or two on a screen.
C) The editorial revamp they went through last Spring(?) has made for a much better magazine - much less of "this happened and we have to have an article on it" or "this is a vague trend and we will pretned its news" and much more "here is something interesting on a current topic."
Yeah, the redesign, which was designed to make Newsweek less a "reporting" vehicle than an "analysis and commentary" vehicle, was the right direction, but still kept things pitched at too simple/basic a level to work.
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