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Economist/The Week/Atlantic Show Growth in Circ in December

By Jeremy

Okay — so magazines aren’t flying off of the news racks these days. Yours truly is still on magazine rack cloud nine. Why? Two of my favorite mags dominated their category in December:

- The Week was up 8.2% in circ in December

- The Atlantic Monthly was up 6.7% in circ in December

The top performer in ABC’s news/opinion/business category was The Economist…which I also like. Boohoo, though, for one of my favorite mags, The New Yorker, which fell .5% in the month.

Why did this happen? The election. The Economist, The Week, and The Atlantic all provide different essential kinds of content regarding the upcoming slugfest:

- The Week: A roundup of everything that happened, and what the pundits said about it

- The Atlantic: Deep dives into domestic politics, politicos, and policy

- The Economist: A focus on how it will affect the domestic and international economy, and those bits of brash unby-lined opinion that fans of the mag have come to expect

So why did US News (+.1%), Newsweek (-.3%), and Time (-17.6%) struggle? My theory is that Americans have come to learn that when they want to know which colleges are hot, or why their kids are fat, or why their kids are stupid, or why playing video games is good/bad for their kids, they turn to the big three newsweeklies. But when it comes to hardcore news and analysis that you can trust, these books are no longer the go-to buys.

So, I hereby dub The Week maggrabbag’s first ever magazine of the week. Congratulations, The Week.

This entry was posted on February 12, 2008 at 7:43 pm and is filed under mag of the week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Economist/The Week/Atlantic Show Growth in Circ in December”

  1. Jessica Sibley Hire at BusinessWeek: The Story Behind the Story « mag grab bag Says:
    February 13, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    [...] Two other recent high-profile placements of Koller’s were Paul Turcotte as SVP of ad sales at Sirius Satellite Radio (came from Hachette), and Justin Smith as president of consumer media at The Atlantic Media Company (came from The Week…my magazine of ‘the week’).  [...]

  2. Jessica Sibley Hire at BusinessWeek: The Story Behind the Story « mag grab bag Says:
    February 14, 2008 at 4:00 am

    [...] Two other recent high-profile placements of Koller’s were Paul Turcotte as SVP of ad sales at Sirius Satellite Radio (came from Hachette), and Justin Smith as president of consumer media at The Atlantic Media Company (came from The Week…my magazine of ‘the week’). [...]

  3. Should Time and Newsweek Take a Position? « mag grab bag Says:
    February 25, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    [...] — stuff not worthy of regular, in-depth national attention (long-time devotees will recognize this rant).  So why not jump into The New York Times/Washington Post/Wall Street Journal space as editorial [...]

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