Newsweek To More Than Quintuple In Price

– News Mag Seeks To Test Boundaries of What Readers Will Pay For Stale News and Vapid Commentary –

According to industry sources, Newsweek magazine is about to undergo a major overhaul. The magazine’s parent, the Washington Post, hopes the changes will take Newsweek “from a money-losing position in the weekly-news category to a money-making one in the thought-leader category.”

Or at least to a position of leading the thoughts of people who are waiting to see the dentist.

Barber shops are expected to be especially hard hit as the print magazine moves from surface coverage of news that broke a week earlier on The Drudge Report to a magazine that will rely heavily on opinion pieces that will be only five days behind topics dissected in the blogosphere.

Newsweek subscribers currently pay an average of 47 cents per issue even though production and mailing costs are over one dollar per issue. With the projected savings from the makeover, magazine executives hope to hire a new accountant who can add and subtract.

Every magazine will now feature at least 75 subscription cards offering readers a chance to “order now and get Newsweek for 25% above the news stand price.”

Newsweek also announced it will be raising the news stand cover price from the current one dollar to $5.95 an issue. That’s not a price hike, that’s a price pilgrimage.

The new price virtually assures customers will never read a magazine that isn’t dog-eared and at least three months old. There’s a good chance weekly production will consist of only four Newsweeks which will then circulate throughout the country for the next year and a half.

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Like pornography, I don’t know what a ‘thought-leader’ is … but I’ll know it when I see one….

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Image: spentrail on Flickr

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