News Strong to News Weak

A venerable giant in our news lexicon, Newsweek shifts from print to online only.

Newsweek, an 80-year-old standard-bearer for news magazines, announced on October 18 that they would cease print operations at the start of 2013, and switch to an all-digital format.

It’s hard not to see this development as gloomy, especially for we news consumers who’ve seen daily local papers shrink or disappear, and who’ve seen dramatic changes forced on venerable outfits like the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Christian Science Monitor, and the The New York Times Magazine.

Newsweek’s editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, makes clear in her announcement that the organization is reacting to the same demographic shifts and economic forces that downsized the Times-Picayune and compelled the Monitor to publish only online. She cites the 39 percent of Americans who say they get their news from the Web, as well as the explosive growth in tablet users, who are perhaps the ripest targets for subscription-based digital distribution. She leaves unspoken the shrinking circulation of print editions — and the commensurate shrinkage of ad revenue — but there’s no doubt these were the spurs that made Newsweek’s shift inevitable.

We’ll miss Newsweek, at least the Newsweek we’ve come to know. Brown promises no change in editorial vitality and journalistic integrity, and we have no reason to doubt her word. But still, the nostalgia…

But we’re advertisers and business people, and nostalgia pays no bills. In that respect, what does an all-online Newsweek mean to us? 

It means that marketers had better come to understand, to master, the evolutionary changes in the news industry. Consumers will still be reading Newsweek, as well as all the other digital outlets, and they’ll still be receptive to our advertising messages.

But they’ll be a somewhat different set of consumers. On average they’ll be younger, more tech-savvy, more affluent. And as tier-based subscribers, they’ll be empowered to pick and choose which marketing messages they’ll see. These are the realities that create insurmountable challenges for some 21st-century advertisers and awesome opportunities for others.

So yes, we’ll miss the Newsweek we’ve known all our lives. But we’re ready to work with the new Newsweek, and ready to thrive in this new media landscape. We hope you are too.

The C4:

1. The December 31, 2012 issue of Newsweek will be their last in print. As of New Year 2013, Newsweek will join the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times Magazine in shifting to an all-digital format.
    
2. Grant yourself a moment of nostalgia. Think about the noble history of print news in this country. Reflect on the sad fact that the print news industry is disappearing before our eyes.
    
3. But let that moment pass, and get busy adapting. For advertisers, this new media landscape presents awesome opportunities. It’s an entirely different world, requiring different approaches and newly developed skillsets.
    
4. We’re dedicating ourselves to embracing this new world, and we hope you are too. Tina Brown would agree: it’s a matter of survival.

Indies v. Old Hands

You can't always tell a book by its, ummm, format.

One of the most interesting emerging markets — emerging in the form of a deluge, that is — is ebooks. Kindle is king, but Amazon’s competitors (Nook, Kobo, etc.) contribute a healthy percentage of global sales, which will probably top a quarter billion units moved this year.

The interesting bit is the number of those units published by absolute independents (indies): content creators as editors, designers and Amazon-partnered media moguls.

That means a lot of dross gets in, but it isn’t all dross. The top-performing indies — Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath and Scott Nicholson among others — are completely outperforming the publishing powerhouses.

Traditional publishing is lost at sea with ebooks. They’re pricing them wrong, formatting them poorly and marketing them not at all. The best indies have mastered formatting, have found the sweet spot of pricing (.99 to 4.99), and are marketing like the self-interested creative types they are.

And they're cleaning up.

What comes next will be driven by technology, by the inventiveness of indies and by whether or not the traditionals get competitive. They could crush the indies if they simply dumped their entire backlists into the .99 e-bin.

Conversely, indies will probably better ride the next wave of innovation. The potentials are limitless. F'rinstance, since most ebooks are read on tablets, what’s stopping publishers from inserting video into ebooks?

And who sounds more likely to try that? The indie or the old hand?

The C4:

1. Ebook sales are huge and growing, with over 115,000,000 units sold by Amazon alone last year. 
2. Direct electronic publishing technology means we're all potential ebook sellers. 
3. The market is straining under this flood.
4. Motivated independents are seizing their opportunities and outperforming all competition — including the powerhouse New York book publishers.