How The Week Beat Newsweek

Andrew Ferguson explains how Jon Meacham and his colleagues got it wrong at Newsweek.

Andrew Ferguson explains:

[I]t is now an article of faith in the magazine business that readers don’t want this at all. Immersed as they are in round-the-clock cable TV and websites, they don’t need a rehash of events a week old. I’m a fuddy-duddy, world class, but I’m not so sure. It’s true that most journalists have fixed themselves to the info-teat of their iPhones’ Twitter feeds. A rather smaller percentage of normal people live this way, and the presumption that the desires and tastes of journalists are identical to those of their customers is one of the many mistakes that brought Meacham and his colleagues to their present pickle.

Meanwhile, the most successful weekly magazine in the English-speaking world is the Economist, and one of the most successful magazine start-ups of the recent past has been the Week. Both offer readers, among much else, a rehash of the past week’s events. Donald Graham might want to give them a second look.