Ad Revenue Plummets for News Magazines

A hard adjustment to new media

In a difficult advertising environment for the magazine industry overall, newly-released numbers from the Association of Magazine Media (MPA) show the nation's news magazines being hit particularly hard.

Total consumer magazine ad pages dropped 4.9% compared with the first half of 2012, according to MPA data for the first six months of 2013, released July 9. But the drop in ad pages for five major news magazines—Time, The Economist, The Atlantic, The Week and The New Yorker—was far steeper, a combined 18% in the first half of 2013 compared with the same period a year earlier. In one indicator of the difficulties facing news magazines, Newsweek—which saw ad pages decline by 60% from 2002 to 2012—discontinued its print edition at the end of 2012.