Magazine Content

Topic Coverage Over All in the Traditional News Weeklies

The in-depth look at one issue allows us to make close comparisons of the nature and editorial choices of the various magazines. A broader look at the breakdown of topics year-to-year provides a sense of the shifts in coverage over time.

Through the first eight months of 2005 the data from Hall’s Magazine Reports show a big change from a year earlier in the topics covered. Looking at the three traditional news magazines combined, national affairs, while still the largest topic in the weeklies, fell off dramatically — down to 21% of all pages — and if the trend continued that would be a 9% drop from 2004.3 While it’s true that 2004 was a presidential election year, there were some notable national news headlines in 2005, from Tom DeLay’s court troubles to the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the investigation of the White House adviser Karl Rove. (It should be noted, however, that the page tally took place before Hurricane Katrina, which was bound to increase the national affairs coverage.)

News Magazine Pages by Topic, 1980-2005

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Source: Halls Media Research unpublished data

* 2005 data from January - August

What filled the pages left open by the drop in coverage of national affairs? For the most part, it seemed to be cultural news, which increased 4%, from 11% to 15%. But it was not alone in seeing gains. Health and medical science, and global and international affairs, were both up 2%, to 10% and 17% of all pages, respectively. And business pages and entertainment and celebrity pages both grew slightly to 9% each.4

Title by Title

Amid those broad shifts, there were also some differences among the Big Three magazines, particularly in the light-news areas. Reflecting some of the same differences found in the May 23 issues we examined closely, Time and Newsweek devoted far more of their pages to entertainment/celebrity topics than did U.S. News (14% for Time, 10% for Newsweek and 1% for U.S. News). U.S. News’s “news you can use” predilections also showed up in page counts. The magazine was by far the leader in health and medical science stories, which made up 14% of the pages in the first eight months of 2005. The topic accounted for 8% of Newsweek’s pages and 9% of Time’s.5

News Weekly Topics, 2005

By percentage of pages

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Source: Hall’s Media Research unpublished data

* January - August

U.S. News also led the pack in national affairs coverage (24%, versus 18% for Newsweek and 22% for Time) and global/international coverage (19%, versus 15% for Newsweek and 16% for Time.6

Those patterns bear watching, however. The page counts were done before the big announcements at U.S. News of layoffs and its plan to shift to more Web-based publication. What that will mean for the news content is uncertain. It’s possible that U.S. News could become even more hard-news based, focusing in on its core product in a leaner publication.

In 2004

The traditional news weeklies were a little different in 2004. National affairs, where the presidential election coverage normally appears, saw an increase of 5% in total magazine pages from 2003 to 30%, according to figures from Hall’s Magazine Reports. That is a large increase for one year, but still below the high figure of 35% in 1995, when there was no national election under way.7

Just as interesting is where the increase in national pages came from. Mostly they were taken from global/international coverage, which fell 4% in 2004, to 15% of all pages. That happened even though 2004 was a big year for international news, particularly the war in Iraq , where insurgent attacks increased and casualties grew. Also taking small hits in percentage of pages allotted was business coverage, which dropped from 9% of pages in 2003 to 8% in 2004, and personal finance coverage, from 3% to 2%.8