U.S. News No Longer a Newsweekly

With its advertising in a precipitous decline, U.S. News & World Report today announced that it will shift to biweekly frequency in 2009—effectively ending its status as a “newsweekly”—and shifting its focus from news to its “Best of” franchises, health, business and education coverage and daily content on its Web site.

Ad pages fell some 37.5 percent during the first quarter, according to Publishers Information Bureau figures, twice as much as any other newsweekly. Advertising revenue tracked by PIB slid 34.8 percent during that period.

The magazine had recently cut its rate base from 2 million to 1.5 million, while rolling back its frequency from 46 issues per year to 36.

The company outlined the latest changes while announcing a redesign of the print magazine and the formation of the U.S. News Media Group. U.S. News executives were not immediately available for comment.

Tumultuous Time

U.S. News’ dramatic shift comes at a tumultuous time for the category. Newsweeklies, perhaps more than any other magazine sector save for technology titles, have been under constant pressure in recent years to change, forcing the big two—Time and Newsweek—to retool their print designs, ratebases, print dates—anything, it would seem, to adapt to the digital age.

This includes, of course, the build-out of robust, well-trafficked Web sites. (Time.com, for instance, had 5.07 million unique visitors in April, an increase of 28 percent, according to Nielsen Online; U.S. News had 2.52 million uniques in April, a 72 percent increase over the same month in 2007.)

During a recent conference in New York, Time editor Richard Stengel noted that “someday there will be people who don’t know there’s a print product.”

That day may be approaching faster than anticipated. During the first quarter, Time saw its ad pages fall 17.8 percent; Newsweek’s dipped 13.8 percent. Even The Week, Dennis Publishing’s well-regarded 10-year-old title, saw its ad pages fall more than 15 percent. Of the five newsweeklies, in fact, only the Economist increased its total ad pages (5.3 percent) during the first three months of the year.

By The Numbers

SOURCE: PIB, Q1, 2008; ad revenue in millions

SOURCE: ABC, Second Half, 2007

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Is It Legal For U.S. News to Cut Prepaid Subscriptions in Half?

Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 07/21/2008 - 16:14.

Concerning U.S. News' decision to go on a biweekly format: is it legal for the company to cut subscribers' prepaid subscriptions in half? I purchased U.S. News and repeatedly renewed it. Each time, I bought a certain number of issues (e.g., 40 issues in my last purchase). I did not purchase the subscription for a specific amount of time (e.g., an annual period) but for a specific number of issues. Now U.S. News advises that it will only publish half as many issues per year, yet when I inquired, it refused to extend the expiration date of my subscription! Its excuse? It counts each bi-weekly issue will be viewed as a "double issue." The net effect: I'll get only half the issues I paid for. Is this legal???

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