by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, http://www.journalism.org/node/3824, February 6, 2007
In a January 25, 2007 article on journalism.org, the Project for Excellence in Journalism wrote:
One year ago, news magazines were in a slump with the number of sold advertising pages declining for many magazines, including Time and Newsweek during 2005. Unfortunately in 2006 the slump was still continuing. According to a count of ad pages by the Publishers Information Bureau, most of the leading news magazines had a flat 2006 while The New Yorker had a particularly hard year and the National Journal had an unusually good year.
This trend was affecting the entire magazine industry but it seemed particularly harsh for news magazines. 2006 started strong but grew more and more weak as the year progressed. With the completion of the year, Time's pages were up by .8%, Newsweek's by .1% and U.S. News' by 1.9%
The general trends of the industry were alarming. Time's ad pages were as low as they were in the early '90's, US News' ad pages were below what they were during the '90's and Newsweek's were as low as they were in 2001 after 9/11.
Online news growth is one factor threatening reader and revenue numbers. To deal with this, Time is planning a weekly survey that asks 2,500 adults if they have read specific issues of the magazine in order to figure out which cover issues attract readers. Other magazines will be observing if this approach succeeds and at the same time questioning the approach. However, in this uncertain time of hardships, the magazine industry is open to new ideas and strategies...
