The surprise success of The Week, a British transplant launched in 2002 and derided then as a wacky throwback, is a twice-told tale. But president Steven Kotok doesn’t mind telling it again as Newsweek’s troubles are cited as fresh evidence that the news weekly category is in a state of terminal decline.
Not so The Week, Kotok told me in a phone interview Monday. Advertising was up double-digits in 2009 and is up double digits again so far this year. Circulation has grown from 100,000 early in last decade to more than 500,000 now. Even digital — not an easy transition for a magazine conceived as a weekly summary — is taking off, with uniques up from 300,000 a month in January 2009 to roughly 1.5 million now.
The Week is a classic case of zigging when others were zagging. As Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report were repositioning away from a replay of the week’s news, The Week’s founder, Felix Dennis, thought there was a market for the right kind of “take 2” on events of the week. The concept had echoes of Henry Luce’s original vision of Time — a stylish replay allowing busy readers to catch up with what they may have missed.
Most media-savvy observers were underwhelmed. “The Wall Street Journal headline read, ‘Is Felix Dennis Mad?’ ” Kotok recalled, “and they didn’t mean angry.” Serious general news also seemed a long reach for Dennis, whose previous hit, Maxim, found a sweet spot somewhere between Esquire, GQ and Playboy.
But Dennis thought he could build a publication like Maxim, so popular with a group of readers that they would pay a good share of the comparitively modest costs and that an accompanying ad base “would take care of itself,” in Kotok’s words.
The Week didn’t turn a profit until 2008, Kotok said, and is still managed for growth rather than robust quarterly margins. “To use a baseball analogy,” the former Minnesotan said, “we’re like the Twins, focused on moves that will pay off three years from now. We’re not like the Yankees who can go out and buy what they need every season.”
The Week is slim by design — 40 pages or so — and aggregates from an array of sources. But is isn’t a news summary exactly, according to Kotok, so much as an exercise in context. The current issue’s cover, is a cartoon showing the president chest-deep in muck next to an oily pelican, with the headline, “Spreading Stain: Will the Gulf oil spill damage Obama’s presidency?”
The idea for the magazine was cooked up by a British journalist in the 1990s who had neither the business background nor resources to develop it. He sold to Dennis, who had already recorded a modest success in England before launching the companion American edition with its own editor and staff.
Sampling has helped. Those who try it often like it. So the Week charges $50 for a first-year sub and pushes renewers up $10 a year, Kotok said, and gets roughly half its revenue from circulation.
Part of the pitch to advertisers is that readers frequently identify The Week as their favorite magazine and are likely to read every issue throughly, which takes a little less than an hour. The Week went so far last fall as to guarantee that readers will remember its ads at a higher rate than placements in competing titles — or it will run free ads until recall reaches that level.
To those who think aggregation naturally belongs in digital format rather than print, Kotok replies that the quick headline scan available on Google or Yahoo sites is quite different from the reflective end-of-the-week experience his readers are after.
At the same time, Kotok concedes, “we had a tough time translating what we do to the Web. The weekly cycle is good for us,” because the first couple of rounds of opinion are already in, “and we can do it our way and bring perspective in a fuller sense.” What eventually seemed to work is an abbreviated version of the magazine’s approach — picking three best takes on breaking topics like Helen Thomas’s gaffe or the ump ruining Armando Galarraga’s perfect game.
Web advertising has followed, he said, picking up some advertisers who are shifting budgets to digital like FedEx or BMW and others with an angle that may appeal to The Week’s readership. Coca-Cola is in the magazine, for instance, but pitching its support of children’s health and exercise rather than drinking Coke.
Some have attributed The Week’s success in large part to its modestly sized editorial staff — currently 17 positions. Kotok said that is not exactly right. “We run tight in all departments — three in circulation and 15 in sales … but none of that would matter if engagement was not as high as it is.”
Kotok was reluctant to comment on Newsweek’s troubles, though The Week’s editor William Falk and his staff are polar opposites to Jon Meacham and company, quietly reading a lot and compiling it with a low profile rather than making the rounds on cable TV.
Kotok did volunteer, “Both my parents (they’re divorced) subscribed to Newsweek since around when I was born. So I have an affection for the product. I loved what they added to the front of the book (like the Conventional Wisdom feature). But I don’t know what’s next for them. I don’t really have an idea of what Newsweek should do; I’m just focused on what The Week does.”
The Week seems altogether to follow Jeff Jarvis’ “Do what you do best, link to the rest” rule or as business author Jim Collins’ “hedgehog concept” describes it: figure out what you do especially well and focus relentlessly on that — you will outlast a lot of the bigger and showier beasts.
