Magazine Audience

It is difficult to point to any one audience trend for news magazines in 2005. Instead there are competing ones. The outlook for the smaller nontraditional titles is quite sunny as circulations continue to rise. The picture for traditional titles, however, is gloomier, with the numbers continuing to fall.

The continuing growth of the nontraditional titles in our informal survey (the New Yorker, the Economist and The Week) along with the continuing growth of the Nation, is impressive in that it is occurring in a time when other print media, like newspapers, are losing subscribers. The success of these nontraditional titles, which are text-heavy, suggests there may indeed be a future for print publications.

The biggest trend, moreover, may be occurring outside of the news. Entertainment titles are growing again, and growing fast. New titles are jumping into a market that was once thought to be saturated, some coming from Europe .

Winners and Losers in News Magazine Circulation

Among news magazines, the headline is the success of The Week. With its aggregation approach to the news weekly, it added more than 65,000 subscribers in one year. In total numbers, it is still relatively small potatoes in the news weekly world — 246,000 circulation as of June 2004 — but its rate of growth is impressive. In fact, if 2005 publisher’s numbers are correct, the magazine has since added another 100,000 in circulation.1

Other nontraditional news titles, the Economist and the New Yorker, continued to grow as well, but more slowly, according to June 2004 audit reports.2

The other steady story line in magazine circulation, the decline in audience numbers at the three traditional titles — Time, Newsweek and U.S. News — continued as well in 2004, according to audit reports and publisher’s statements.3

Circulation of Non-Traditional News Magazines

1988 - 2004

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations, annual audit reports & publisher’s statements

*The Atlantic is a monthly magazine

The growth among the new, smaller and different approaches to news gives fuel to the theory that Americans aren’t necessarily rejecting a weekly publication of news, they may simply want a different format. If one compares the paid circulation gains at the New Yorker, the Economist and the Week (164,000) with the losses at Time, Newsweek and U.S. News (150,000), there is a net circulation gain of 14,000.4

But if it is a different format they want, Americans don’t seem sure what it is. The magazines growing in circulation bear little resemblance to each other in content. It may be that no news magazine today will be able to command the kind of audience once garnered by the traditional titles. People read magazines for different reasons than 30 or 40 years ago, and people are awash in choices and information. So the dominating news weeklies may be a thing of the past, and the news weekly model may become more of a niche product. If so, expensive world-wide reporting staffs may be unsustainable.

The Nontraditional Titles

The Week, perhaps the most different of the three growing titles has seem its circulation skyrocket — up more 38%in 2004 from 2003.5 If the growth continues at that pace, the effects on the entire news magazine field could be significant. For now, the growing numbers are slightly more heavily based on subscriptions than those for the traditional titles. Time and Newsweek get 4% or 5% of their circulation from newsstand sales, U.S. News around 2%. The Week‘s newsstand sales are less than 1% of its total circulation.6

The Economist continues its impressive growth as well, seemingly unburdened by its high subscription price, which is more than twice those of Time or Newsweek. And its growth seems to belie the oft-heard theory that consumers aren’t interested in international news. There is no real “home country” in the magazine. Countries and continents are treated more equally in terms of space than in any other major title. If foreign news doesn’t sell in other U.S. publications, perhaps the Economist has found a niche with the audience that enthusiastically embraces global news. Over all, the Economist’s circulation was up 49,000 in 2004, or 11%, over 2003.7

The New Yorker, with its literate, long-form approach to news, also continues to see circulation growth. At 996,000 in 2004, it was just shy of the 1 million mark according to audit reports.8 That was an increase of 47,000 over the year before. That growth may not be as explosive as the growth of The Week, but considering the age of the New Yorker, it is in some ways even more impressive. People aren’t just learning about the magazine, they know what is in it and they are seeking it out. Again, while critics will note (rightly) that the New Yorker does not fit the traditional mold of a news magazine, its growth has come during a stretch when the title became more news-focused, particularly around politics.

The other titles we track were mixed in their numbers.

The up-again, down-again circulation bounces of Jet continued in 2004, with the upside winning again. The magazine was back to just over 900,000 after a dip in 2002 and 2003.9 It still isn’t where it was before the 2001 recession, but the gains of 44,000 in the last publisher’s statement suggest it may be in line to get there.

The Atlantic Monthly, meanwhile, continued its slide. Its 2004 circulation of 439,137 is the lowest we have seen since 1988.10 What’s driving the drop? That is not immediately clear. Publisher David Bradley says his goal is to change the magazine’s audience base, shrinking circulation while increasing subscription costs, aiming for a more exclusive niche. Even with such a strategy, though, the drops are fairly steep. The last decline of 55,000 represented an 11% drop; over two years the decrease has been 17%. Some analysts believe that the New Yorker, which offers similar longer pieces about topical subjects, is drawing readers away from the Atlantic. The magazine is in the process of moving its headquarters from Boston to Washington, D.C. , and will be removing short stories from its content mix. It will be interesting to whether those changes help circulation, and if so, how.

The Traditional Weeklies

The most worrisome drops, however, were in the three traditional news weeklies. Taken together they lost 126,000 readers in 2004.11 With a total subscriber base for the three of nearly 9.5 million, that is only a 1.3% drop. Similar losses, however, have been occurring for several years now. All three magazines have fallen below their 1988 figures, and Time and U.S. News are sitting at new lows for that period. (Incidentally, unaudited Publisher’s Statements for 2005 show further declines among these titles. Time was down .2% to 4,026,000. Newsweek was off .3% to 3,118,000. U.S. News reported a 1% increase to 2,035,000.)

Circulation Among the Big Three News Magazines

1988 - 2004

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations, annual audit reports and publisher’s statements

And this year there are finally signs that the long, slow erosion of readership among them is taking a toll. U.S. News announced major staff cuts along with a plan to reposition itself in the market. The goal is to spend less time and money on the print edition of the magazine and more of both on its Web presence, which is also expected to mean spending less on newsgathering and features. “We’re trying to be a more fluid, responsive news organization because that’s what the times demand,” Editor Brian Duffy said.12 Some staff members joked about the magazine’s becoming little more than a newsletter with ties to a Web site, people close to the magazine told the Project.

The problems at U.S. News make it timely to consider what, in fairness, is merely speculation. What would happen to the news weekly market if U.S. News suddenly became a completely different animal or stopped publishing altogether? The short-term result presumably would be a bump in subscriptions for Time and Newsweek — a substitution effect. But it’s unlikely the total circulation of the two magazines would reach the numbers the three currently do. Some readers might gravitate to the nontraditional titles. Or some could just stop getting a news magazine altogether.

We noted last year that the number of people who say they regularly read news magazines had declined over the previous 10 years.

If the overall downward trend continues for the traditional news weeklies, however slowly, it is hard to see a sunny scenario for them in the long term. The problems for U.S. News may help Time and Newsweek some now, but could be a harbinger of things to come for those two, as well.