RECORD TURNOUT FOR MAGS
Contact The Author
TIME and Newsweek, which both rushed election specials onto newsstands early, say the issues are already selling out in the major metropolitan markets.
Both hit newsstands early yesterday morning – one day early for Time and four days early for Newsweek.
By late yesterday, Time, which published more than 100,000 extra copies, had already gone back to press, while Newsweek, which also added 100,000 to its print run, was very close to doing the same.
“We may go back to press,” said Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham. “Major markets are selling out. . . It’s a political first and a cultural first.”
By rushing their editions to press Thursday, it’s the first time that the two titles have been in head-to-head competition on the newsstands since January 2007, when Time started going on sale on Fridays. Newsweek continues to be sold on Mondays.
“It’s an interesting vote of confidence for print,” said Meacham. “If you want to hold onto something for commemorative purposes, you can’t hold onto a Web page.”
As in past years, the magazine had a team of six reporters following the presidential candidates for more than a year, and they wrote only for the issue that was published immediately after the election.
They used as their cover a photo from a sitting that now-President-elect Barack Obama did in August right before the Democratic National Convention.
Meanwhile, Time was able to get slightly more time to put together its election issue.
As a result, the mag used on its cover a photo by White House photographer Brooks Kraft of Obama giving his victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, which arrived in Time’s New York newsroom around 3 a.m. Wednesday.
“We thought it was head and shoulders above the other photos,” said Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel. “It had the tone and the feel of his speech.”
Meanwhile, both sites were reporting astronomical Web traffic.
Newsweek said it had chalked up over 8 million unique visitors on Wednesday, and Time said it generated 9.6 million page views.
Paring back;
One newsweekly that’s not rushing to capitalize on the Obama election is US News & World Report.
Starting next year, Mort Zuckerman‘s money-losing magazine will scrap its weekly print edition and instead publish monthly.
The staff has been decimated by successive cuts over the past several years, so Editor-in-Chief Brian Kelly won’t have to lay off more staff, now said to number 23 people.
The magazine has not made a profit since the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, and last year the business side, led by President William Holiber, unveiled a plan to have at least one special theme issue a month after it ran into trouble selling a weekly magazine.
US News still publishes guides to the best colleges, best graduate schools and best hospitals. Now that’s all that will remain in print.
In between issues, the magazine will continue to crank out copy for the Web site, which the company said has been growing.
“We’re accelerating this transformation in response to our rapid growth online, where our audience is now about 7 million unique [visitors] a month and growing,” Kelly and Holiber said in a statement. “For all of you who have worked so hard to make this transition possible, say good-bye to Web 2.0 and welcome to Journalism 5.0,” they added.
They declined further comment.
Time’s up;
The big shakeout that was revealed last week at Time Inc. isn’t expected to come to fruition until next week, when headcounts on individual magazines, including Sports Illustrated, People, Entertainment Weekly and Time will be revealed.
But this week, Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief John Huey got the ball rolling by ousting Money Magazine Editor Eric Schurenberg.
“As part of the sweeping changes our company is undergoing, I am sorry to report that a long-time colleague, Eric Schurenberg, managing editor of Money Magazine, is leaving Time Inc.,” said Huey in a note to staffers yesterday.
Schurenberg had worked at Life, Fortune and Business 2.0 and even spent a year outside Time Inc. launching Goldman Sachs’ Web site for investors, “until he realized he was unhappy as anything but a journalist,” said Huey. “Still, he spent most of his Time Inc. career where he ended it – at Money.”
A 20-year veteran of Time Inc., Schurenberg won a Gerald Loeb award for Excellence in Business Journalism for his investigation of the AARP, and a National Magazine Award for Personal Service on how to navigate the last market crash.
Bath time
American Media Inc.’s longtime financial backers are finally ready to take a financial bath and hand over control of the company to the bondholders.
The move came after the company’s first proposal – in which the bond holders would have gotten 20 percent of AMI’s stock and the current board would remain intact – was rejected.
The new plan, presented to bondholders Wednesday, gives them 95 percent of the stock and control of a new board, in exchange for some relief on the $1.06 billion in debt plaguing the company. The deal would knock out anywhere from $250 million to $300 million of debt.
AMI was forced into the drastic move because the company has about $450 million in bond payments due in May and doesn’t have the cash to make them. Terms tied to the debt call for a deal to be in place by February.
If approved by bondholders, the deal could potentially save the job of embattled CEO David Pecker.
But it also would abolish the current nine-member board controlled by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Roger Altman‘s Evercore Partners, and replace it with a seven-member board with the bond holders controlling four seats.
THL Partners and Evercore would end up with a mere 5 percent stake, and might have a seat or two on the new board.
THL Partners originally put about $290 million into AMI, good for 59 percent of the equity, while Evercore invested about $125 million, good for a 22 percent stake.
In the original lineup, Pecker had about a 5 percent stake. All will see their interests shrink under the new deal.
However, with the company able to generate cash, it might be able to survive without filing for bankruptcy.
What’s more, the original backers get warrants that allow them to buy a stake of up to 20 percent more of the company if it fixes its problems.
The company also pulled back the curtain on financial data for the individual magazines, which collectively have seen a 5.5 percent drop in ad revenue this year.
In the first half of the current fiscal year, covering a period from April to September, Star’s half-year net income declined to $15.7 million from $18 million, while The National Enquirer’s profit fell to $20.6 million from $23.1 million.
Shape’s profit dropped to $11.5 million from $17.8 milion, while Men’s Fitness dropped to $1.3 million from $2.2 million. Muscle & Fitness was one of the few with a rise in profit, climbing to $13.7 million from $11.3 million.
AMI’s cash flow is projected to be $115 million for the full year.
Several top executives have left AMI in the past year, including last week’s departure of President and COO John Miller and former editorial director Bonnie Fuller.