If you want to see why the business model of the so-called legacy media is screwed, look no further than Newsweek, which sold the other day for $1 plus the assumption of $70 million or so of debt.
The Daily Beast got hold of a 66-page sales presentation on the magazine and filled in a few details that weren’t publicly known. Good on The Daily Beast for putting it online.
Newsweek has just 122 journalists, both print and digital. They make up just more than a third of the magazine’s total employees. We’re not told what the average Newsweek journalist makes, but the average employee there gets $123,000 in salary and benefits.
That’s probably a good number for the journalists, too. If so, its newsroom labor costs it just $15 million. Overall labor is $42 million.
The mag took in $165 million in revenue last year (to look at it one way, that’s $1.4 million per journalist).
The problem, of course, is it spent $222 million and lost $28 million (it benefited from a big pension credit). It costs a lot of money to print and distribute a magazine (not to mention to get subscribers).
Its revenue came almost entirely from print, and it took in more revenue from circulation than from ads: $70 million from print ads and $80 million from subscriptions and newsstand sales. It took in just $9 million online (and $6 million from “other) on a CPM of $14. Excluding “other,” print accounted for 94 percent of revenue, while online made up just 6 percent. It actually lost $5 million on its website, which cost it $14 million last year.
But what’s really interesting is where Newsweek spent its money.
The mag spent $102 million on subscription services, circulation, and production—In other words, on producing and shipping the physical product.
That’s why iPad-adoption critical mass can’t get here soon enough. Once that happens, magazines and newspapers could shut down their presses and virtually eliminate those massive production costs. If they’re able to shift subscribers and single copy purchases to e-readers, the numbers could start to look a whole lot better.
And Newsweek is paying $13 million a year in rent, which is way, way too high.
Even allowing for an extremely generous 250 square feet of office space per employee (there are 341 left there), that works out to a whopping $158 per square foot in rent. That’s nearly four times the going rate for Manhattan office space of about $42 a foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield via The Real Deal. Even accounting for the 150 or so extra employees it used to have, the number still is well above $100 a foot for a pretty big office.
To put it another way, for $13 million a year, you could get 305,000 square feet of Manhattan office space—or about 1,000 square feet per Newsweeker. That’s nuts. An organization the size of Newsweek in this day and age should have 75,000 square feet, tops. In other words, it’s paying about $10 million a year too much in rent. It will be able to downsize at some point, either when its lease is up or if it’s able to sublet part of its space to another tenant.
Fortunately, Rafat Ali reported earlier that Washington Post Company’s lucrative Kaplan division will be taking over its New York offices anyway by the end of this summer. (ADDING: And the presentation itself says that will save some $6 million a year.)
The outlandish rent is part of the magazine’s $55 million general and administrative budget last year (that doesn’t even include advertising staff, which cost $19 million). Again, that’s about twice what the magazine spent on the actual journalism that goes into the magazine (total newsroom cost, including labor, was $29 million.
Even after all that cutting, you’ve got a top-heavy business that can’t compete in the age of streamlined digital businesses where a site like Investopedia sells for $42 million today, or four times its 2010 sales.
That’s hardly news, but the numbers put it in stark relief.
Clearly Newsweek has been doing poorly, and Sidney Harman and his people have a major challenge ahead of them to make it a viable business.
But this hardly amounts to conclusive proof that "the business model of the so-called legacy media is screwed."
Look at The Economist and Der Spiegel, two other media organizations who've based their operation around a print product.
Both have arguably come out stronger on the other side of the crisis. The Economist Group, for example, had an 17.9% operating profit in annus horribilis 2009.
#1 Posted by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, CJR on Thu 5 Aug 2010 at 10:06 AM
Thanks for the solid detail. It is especially embarrassing for NEWSWEEK because, well, the publication likes to give financial advice in a knowing, provincial NYC tone. Of course, NEWSWEEK gives advice on everything else in the same tones, almost all of it worthless. Now I have more clues as to why.
#2 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 5 Aug 2010 at 12:36 PM
Why mention the ipad, when Amazon's Kindle points the way? It costs around five times less than the ipad (the 64gb ver anyway), and you can already get a Kindle subscription for just about any magazine you wish to read. I'm not an Apple hater, just a sensible person who realizes you don't need a tablet version of the Mac to read an ebook (or emagazine). Dedicated ereaders have dropped in price to where they are within spitting distance of that magical price-point of universal adoption: $100.
#3 Posted by rpbird, CJR on Thu 5 Aug 2010 at 03:39 PM
The Kindle is fine for book type reading, but it doesn't have much in the way of graphic or photo capabilities. iPad would deliver a much more enriching visual layout than the traditional print media, never mind the flat, 2-D Kindle world.
#4 Posted by Jay B., CJR on Thu 5 Aug 2010 at 06:27 PM
I enjoyed the perspective presented in this article, but I am impatient with the incorrect use of punctuation and possessives in CJR.
Case in point:
" In other words, it’s paying about $10 million a year too much in rent. It will be able to downsize at some point, either when it’s lease is up or if it’s able to sublet part of its space to another tenant."
"its" and "it's" are not to be used interchangeably.
#5 Posted by Alice Mercer, CJR on Thu 5 Aug 2010 at 07:12 PM
Alice, I couldn't agree more. Most writers, even from English speaking nations, have stumbled when it comes to the word ít's (as in it is) and the possessive its.
#6 Posted by Patrick Michael, CJR on Fri 6 Aug 2010 at 05:29 AM
"It's" fixed. Thanks, Alice and Patrick.
#7 Posted by Dean Starkman, CJR on Fri 6 Aug 2010 at 08:42 AM
my bad, guys. But please keep in mind that this is a blog. I dont have a fact checker, much less a copy editor. The format is different. That's not to excuse my dumb copy errors, but they're just going to happen. Thanks for pointing out.
#8 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Fri 6 Aug 2010 at 11:33 AM
I think Financial Advice more effective for all people.
Financial Advice Wakefield
#9 Posted by Financial Advice Wakefield, CJR on Sat 13 Nov 2010 at 06:27 AM
Following my own monitoring, millions of people on our planet get the personal loans at various creditors. So, there is a good chance to receive a commercial loan in every country.
#10 Posted by OPAL23Mcfadden, CJR on Fri 16 Sep 2011 at 03:11 PM