Tina’s Beast is Unwell, Part II

Mickey Kaus Columnist
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This will not be pretty: Good to see that Lucia Moses of Adweek is still on the TinaBeast case even after the departure of top AW editor Michael Wolff.  Moses does her best to sound the tom toms of doom despite not having access to the real insiders’ numbers. She says Newsweek losses “are estimated to have hit $20 million last year.” Key deflating tidbit: “[Ad] buyers say Newsweek has been discounting 70 percent off the rate card.” … 

One of the few “bright spots”  is that “[a]d page declines tapered off at 10 percent in the third quarter …. ” In other words, they were only down 10% instead of the usual 20%. Plus how bright a spot is it that newsstand sales are “up 2.8 percent in the first half of the year” given that the magazine cut its cover price by a dollar to $4.95? …

P.S.: An ambitious and dramatic Moses graph suggests that Brown’s seemingly ego-driven decision to submerge the Newsweek.com web site under the little-known DailyBeast was in fact the disaster that people said it would be. (I don’t quite trust this graph, because it suggests sharp month-to-month dropoffs in Beast stats that defy belief.) … Now that Tina is abandoning the Beast like a no-longer-wanted party guest surely it would have made sense, in retrospect, to have named the whole thing Newsweek.com. …

In general, it looks like it won’t be a sudden, brutal death for Tina’s venture. It will be a long, agonizing BS-filled death! Even better! At least until owners Jane Harman and Barry Diller pull the plug and spoil the fun. … And there are plenty of publications (e.g., Salon) that are always dying but never seem to actually die. …

P.P.S.: Can’t blame Meacham forever!

Conflict of interest disclosure here. …

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Mickey Kaus