Magazine Content

The New Yorker

While the New Yorker has become more “newsie” and political in the past 20 years (see the 2005 report), the general mix more recently has remained largely unchanged, according to Hall’s Magazine Reports.

Cultural affairs and entertainment issues remain the linchpin of the New Yorker, accounting for close to half of all pages. But as we saw previously, the magazine’s approach to culture and entertainment is deeper, with an emphasis on issue-based pieces or profiles. And the prominence given to “general interest” coverage demonstrates the latitude the magazine takes in covering more off-beat issues. Where the traditional news weeklies purport to cover the week’s news across many areas — politics, culture, business — the New Yorker does not.

The small shifts that did occur in 2004 and 2005 were likely tied to the 2004 election. Political coverage (as a part of national affairs) rose 12% during the election year, but fell back down again in the beginning of ‘05 to less than 10% of coverage overall.9

New Yorker Topics

2004 vs. 2005

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Halls Media Research unpublished data

The election-year shifts suggest that even though the magazine isn’t a “news magazine” per se, its editors feel its content is at least tied to the news in some way, particularly where politics is concerned.

Summary

After a long stable period, the traditional titles may be facing serious challenges from two different models.

The Economist and the New Yorker, thick magazines that belie the suggestion that consumers want news more quickly, have been seen as models for smaller niche audiences. The question is whether the approach of The Week, a magazine with no first-hand reportage built as a kind of print-blog, can resonate with a bigger mass audience.

The Week counters many of the prevailing trends in the news media today. It has no bylines and is developing no “personalities” for TV or radio consumption. It has no reporters trying to get “exclusives” to trumpet on its cover. It does not rely heavily on opinion or its own point of view to win readers. But its style and approach seem tailor-made for an audience looking for easily digestible, even pre-digested, news.