While reading one of the finance blogs, their news summary had a link to another mystery still-in-print magazine, BusinessWeek. Now, this has obviously survived due to the bankrolling of Bloomberg.

Bloomberg Business Week. Abbreviated: BBW.

They are going to try to get people to pay for subscriptions, but the longer term answer will likely be some combination of advertising and Barry Diller's chucking of more money down a black hole.

That's what I suspected. How so-many, apparently, smart people can be so dumb is amazing.

Surely they'd be better off going the other way: produce a properly well written and comprehensively researched publication, and charge subscribers and advertisers accordingly. It seems to be working elsewhere in print, so I'm not sure why it couldn't in news journalism. Of course if they're using a financial/circulation benchmark from forty-years back then anything else is going to look like failure.

caja-dglh wrote:


Hey now.

For over a decade I used to alternate subscribing to Time or Newsweek, depending on which one gave me the better deal, because I did not see much difference in them, that was until the late 90s. Since then I occasionally pick up Time at a newstand but did that once with Newsweek about 3 years ago and have never purchased one since as the quality really went down.

Do you think Katherine Graham is spinning in her grave at today's news?

Amor de Cosmos wrote:


As you've likely seen, we're starting next week. If the thoughtful and erudite 'comments' section is anything to go by, we're out of our minds. We'll see.

Yeah, I've kind of been following this change, but it's not really clear to me what I'm getting by subscribing,* only what I'm losing. I think there's a fundamental disconnect with the audience there somewhere.

*Bar a couple of business sections which I likely wouldn't read anyway.

Yeah, it's a bit clear-as-mud. It's more complex in the telling than it will be in the execution. Casual visitors likely won't notice much change. Heavy online users will.

I'm guessing there will be a high irritation factor with "ten articles" lock-out. Won't a lot of people just say "bugger it" and piss off to the Post?

The great Torontonian Public's demand for "The Leafs Still Suck" and "Rob Ford is Still a Loon" articles is insatiable.

Plus there's always the Wente proviso. The article only counts against the quota if it is the first time the idea has appeared in print . . .

Possibly. But what's the downside? They didn't pay here before, and they don't pay there now? They're banking on the people who agree that you need to pay for good journalism. Some people will, and some people won't. Same as iTunes vs pilfering music.

ursus arctos wrote:


For shame, sir....

But what's the downside?

That the G&M brand atrophies and ends up as a digital householder?

I need to be convinced I'm getting something more if I pay for a subscription than I'm getting presently. More depth, more evident research, a greater breadth of viewpoint, more ideas, more creativity. Less received opinion, less repetition, less "Life" section filler. Show me. If the quality's there, I'll pay. If not I'll continue to scan headlines across the multiverse and buy The Believer and Lapham's Quarterly later for protein.

I can't stand Wente.

Who can. She's the Globe's designated right-wing lightning rod. Totally ignorable.

The one thing I don't understand is how British newspapers are priced so cheaply - 20p for the i, and practically all others under £1, compared to €2 here (the Irish version of the Mail is €1, but that's transnational economy of scale).

Newsweek is mentioned in both Simon & Garfunkel's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" ("In a couple of days they come to take me away/But the press let the story leak/And when the radical priest come to get me released/Well we was all on the cover of Newsweek") and Brian Eno's "Burning Airlines Give You So Much More" ("I guess Regina's on a plane a Newsweek on her knees/While miles below the curlews call from strangely stunted trees.")

So it's been immortalized in song, at least.

*pedant alert*

"Me and Julio" was on Paul Simon's first post-split solo album. Though they did perform it live together (notably in Central Park), it isn't a Simon & Garfunkel song.

*end alert*

I actually wondered about that, but must have been remembering the Central Park concert because I was hearing Art's voice along with Paul's in my head.

It helps to have lived through all that in real time.

It's a real relic of its time, isn't it?

The "radical priest" must also bewilder today's yoof.

Indeed. Priests of any political leaning are fairly scarce nowadays. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a priest out and about. I used to see them (and nuns) fairly often when I was a kid.

Although some of that drop-off might be due to laxer dress codes. They probably travel in civvies more often now.