Annals of bad strategy: The MSM creates new competitors and alienates paying customers

Andrew Ferguson’s take on Jon Meacham and the sale of Newsweek is a sharp piece of press criticism. If A. J. Liebling is the gold standard for the genre, then Ferguson is pure 24K.

Don’t Give the Readers What They Want

Ferguson has no patience for the histrionic pity party Meacham threw for himself. (He’s been onto Meacham for quite some time.) What he sees clearly is that Newsweek’s woes have a lot to do with the poor decisions of the editors, most especially top editor Jon Meacham.


That Meacham went on the Daily Show in search of tea and sympathy is just more evidence that the MSM mandarins really do not understand their business or the nation they pretend to serve.

Like many of the dying dinosaurs of the Old Media, Meacham explains away his failure to save Newsweek by pointing to big external trends that are beyond his control. People do not want to pay for quality journalism anymore he whimpers. (As Ferguson notes, Meacham was happy to jettison half his subscribers who were still paying for Newsweek’s journalism.) That old evil internet is killing the institutions that stand between ignorance and democracy.

There is another big external trend that Meacham did not bring up on The Daily Show. A large chunk of the population thinks it can stay informed about the world without reading any thing at all. Among the younger demographics, The Daily Show and Colbert Report now stand in for newspapers, Newsweek, and Walter Cronkite.

If Meacham really cared about the battle between “ignorance and democracy”, this trend should scare the daylights out of him. As a simple matter of marketing, newsweeklies should draw sharp distinctions between themselves and these infotainment competitors. Instead, Meacham actually adds to TDS’s image as a legitimate journalistic outlet.

It’s not just his latest appearance that Ferguson analyzed. Newsweek has been hyping Jon Stewart as our new Ed Murrow for years. (See here ). Some wise guy even had the brilliant idea to let Stephen Colbert edit an issue of their magazine.


It’s hard to convince people to pay for your product when you yourself talk up the advantages of that competitor who charges less.

Any guy running a two pump gas station knows that. Why has that wisdom escaped the best minds of the traditional MSM?