NEW YORK: Newsweek’s operating losses last year totaled $28.1 million and $15.4 million the previous year. So The Washington Post Company announced on May 5 that it would sell the magazine, which it bought in 1961, and here is what people said.
Donald Graham, chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Company, “Newsweek’s staff has been remarkable in cutting expenses and putting out a great magazine. But we did not see a path to sustained profitability within the company.”
Jon Meacham, Newsweek editor and an OPC member, “In the sense that we are all in an existential crisis, it is not what I would call a stunning decision [to sell the magazine]… . I decline to accept that Newsweek in some form does not have a role to play going forward.”
Edward Kossner, Newsweek editor in the late 1970s, “Those magazines had much more stature in those days. It was really important what was on the cover of Newsweek and what was on the cover of Time because it was what passed for the national press, They helped set the agenda; they helped make reputations.”
Reed Phillips, managing partner at DeSilva & Phillips, a media investment banking firm, “Just as the mass circulation magazines of the 1960s could not survive competition from television, the newsmagazines are not faring well in competition with the Internet.”
Charles Whitaker, research chairman in magazine journalism at Northwestern University school of journalism, “I don’t think Time and Newsweek. in this transformation [redesign], had enough of a distinct voice to capture the fancy of anyone in this incredibly polarized political environment.”
Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time, “Our audience is bigger than the cable audiences. What we have embraced is point-of-view journalism. [Time was] very profitable last year, and we will be even more profitable this year.”