Redesigned 'Newsweek' Way Down on Newsstand

Newish Newsweek editor Jon Meacham has seemed oddly confident in his belief that the path to survival for a newsweekly is to become less like a flashy website and more like a textbook. In today's Wall Street Journal story on the evolution of news magazines, Meacham boasts that Newsweek has 30 percent more text and fewer photos than it did when he took over.

But what do the readers think? An analysis of recent newsstand sales suggests they don't buy into Meacham's vision.

Since Newsweek introduced its redesign last October, newsstand sales have averaged 84,857, down 24 percent over the same period a year earlier. (Those figures only include the first three issues of 2008; Newsweek is apparently one of the titles that has been slow to adopt the industry's new rapid circulation reporting mechanism.)

In the same period, Time -- which went in the opposite direction with its own most recent redesign, emphasizing photos and shorter articles -- has averaged newsstand sales of 106,293, down 16.8 percent year-over-year.

Of course, each title has reduced its rate base, the circulation level guaranteed to advertisers, in the past 18 months -- Time at the start of 2007, and Newsweek at the beginning of this year. But newsstand analyst John Harrington says those reductions were made to get rid of expensive-to-maintain subscriptions. "I don't think it would've impacted [single-copy sales] at all," he says.

One final caveat: Newsstand sales make up only a tiny fraction of overall circulation for both Time and Newsweek. But they're still the best and most direct indicator of consumer interest, whereas subscription totals can be manipulated through any number of devices.