Daqui a um mês a Newsweek deixa de ser publicada em papel. Tina Brown, a sua célebre editora, dá uma bela entrevista à New York Magazine onde conta algumas histórias sobre a própria revista (que explicam em parte a sua falência) e fala sobre o futuro das newsmagazines. Ficam aqui algumas passagens.
Was it really losing $40 million a year?
I’m not supposed to reveal the exact numbers. But I will tell you it cost $42 million just to print Newsweek.
Wow.
Before you’ve even engaged one writer, or one copy editor, or one picture editor. Forty-two million dollars.
That’s sort of a good piece of evidence for the idea that magazines ought to go online.
That was the thing. We just looked at it in the spring, and everything, every trend, suggested this was never going to change. It’s not like you felt it was a temporary advertising situation.
(…)
Newsweek, in its heyday, had correspondents all over the world.
Thirty bureaus.Thirty bureaus.
You know, it was very funny—when I looked at the document of sale, it was like the vestiges of the great galleon it had been. It was like that wreck of the Titanic in the James Cameron film—they’re swimming through the rooms, and you see the chandeliers. Every so often, you would swim around a corner and see a chandelier—things like private dining. You suddenly realize, this was an era when there were things like private dining rooms.
Yes.
When [Washington Post publisher and Newsweek owner] Kay Graham arrived in a foreign city, she was really like the State Department—the Newsweek bureau would be there to greet her. And that Newsweek bureau would immediately get her an interview with, you know, Ferdinand Marcos.
She had a private chef at Newsweek. And when she wasn’t in town, I remember the editor at the time, Bill Broyles, got to use the chef.
I know.
How much of that is unnecessary?
It’s totally unnecessary.
(…)
In ten years, will we still have newspapers on paper?
“No” is the short answer, unless printed at home via the web.
Will the current corporate structure survive—Time Warner, News Corp., the New York Times?
It’s really, really difficult for the old behemoths to stay nimble in an era of such disruptive innovation. Elephants can’t tap dance. New empires can be built so fast, as we saw with Facebook and Google. I very much doubt by mid-century most of the major-brand media companies will still be dominant.
What about Time?
I think Time is upheld by being part of a huge corporation with all these other titles. It hasPeople magazine and Sports Illustrated. It’s in the umbrella of so much support, so it’s got a longer life. But I personally think that within two or three years, you’re going to be seeing the same story.
I think a lot of magazines are going to have to go online. There will be magazines, but a lot of magazines are going to decide that with basic, inherent costs, the fact that advertisers want to now be in digital, combined with the reading habits of all of us—they’ll decide that print doesn’t make any sense.
(…)
Well, this is not about me. What about Facebook?
No, I don’t use Facebook. I absolutely don’t want to stay in touch with everybody in my past. I really believe in falling out of touch with people.
Wow.
There’s something very healthy about not seeing someone for three years, not knowing what they’re doing, running into them, and finding that they’re now utterly changed. You know, they have gray hair now and they’re divorced. If I was on Facebook, I would know all those things, and I don’t want to know them.
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