The Online post of the print published introduction to the new Newsweek responding to the new-ish world

Complicated? You bet.

There will, for the most part, be two kinds of stories in the new NEWSWEEK. The first is the reported narrative—a piece, grounded in original observation and freshly discovered fact, that illuminates the important and the interesting. The second is the argued essay—a piece, grounded in reason and supported by evidence, that makes the case for something.

What is displaced by these categories? The chief casualty is the straightforward news piece and news written with a few (hard-won, to be sure) new details that does not move us significantly past what we already know. Will we cover breaking news? Yes, we will, but with a rigorous standard in mind: Are we truly adding to the conversation?

More conversation here.

It speaks, it pays

Matt Brittin, Google's UK director, said today the search engine giant has shared $5bn (£3.3bn) with publishers through its contextual ads program, AdSense, in the last year.

...

"In a world where everyone is a publisher what is needed more than ever is editing skills and brands that help people understand the quality of the content and help them to find the content that is useful. I think there is a big opportunity here," he told the audience of international magazine executives in London.

"The challenge is the model of monetisation online and figuring out how to make that economically viable in the same way as your print products are. Those models are lagging consumer behaviour and all of us are trying to keep up with the consumer."

From The Guardian.

An Excellent Defence of "women's magazines"

But does the economics work? I hope so.

In fact, saying "women's magazines" with an implicit eye-roll is, these days, like calling Brooklyn a hip residential "frontier" or using a VCR: transparently passe. As the earnest compliance with the requests for sit-downs with as many women's magazine EICs who requested them by McCain and Obama made clear, "politicians understand that they can't get elected without women," says Cindi Leive. "So they give us access they never would have two decades ago. Anyone who doesn't get that is sort of trailing the boat, anyway."

Sheila Weller in the Huff Po.

Forget newspapers, what about magazines? Twitter weekly?

If 2008 was the year that newspapers learnt that the diagnosis is fatal, they are going to die in print - maybe not today, or tomorrow: but someday - then 2009 must be about magazines...and books...sitting in that same doctor's waiting room. Here's John A. Byrne, executive editor of Business Week in the US, and editor in chief of BusinessWeek.com.

When we talk about other new ways to compete, most magazines don’t seem to know where to start. Aggregation? Forget it. Few editors want to link to other stories that send people away from their own sites. Curation? Writers don’t “curate” journalism or discussions. They report and file stories and move on. Verticals? Editors want content that appeals to the broadest swath of people and gets massive traffic. User generated content? Most editors still turn up their collective noses at stuff created by their audience. Computer algorithms that replace news judgment for the prominence you give a story? You’ve got to be kidding. And Twitter? What’s that?

Writing in the Nieman Reports Byrne describes how his title has morphed from:

...a brand that produces a weekly magazine to one that is pretty much a 24/7 multiplatform organization

Much more that's interesting beyond newspapers here.

Time out

600 jobs to go and the European edition edited from New York.

Time Inc’s statement explaining the changes: “As part of its continuing process of aligning costs and operations to the way people consume news today, Time International is proposing to consolidate some editorial functions in New York, where Michael Elliott, the editor of Time International, has been based since 2006.

More here.

Chat: social networking style boost for online magazines?

Can group chat keep fickle web readers on this publisher's web pages? We suspect that it could work well, but the first implementation we've seen left a lot to be desired.

Powered by fast-growing web IM platform Meebo, these new chat widgets can be accompanied by multimedia that chat users can view together. In a world where the magazine industry has to be feeling some pain from sites like MySpace and Facebook, maybe magazines have to put a little MySpace on their own websites.

From ReadWriteWeb.

Did you know there was a website entitled: Magazine Death Pool?

It's creator, aka The Grim Reaper (a magazine insider, then?), was interviewed this week by Media Life.

Which magazine death over the past month has been the most surprising?

None. At this stage of the game, there aren't that many surprising magazines shutdowns.

Every one that has shut down didn't shock anybody because of their dubious status. Without rock-solid fundamentals to withstand a terrible economy, coupled with the migration of consumers getting news and entertainment from the web, there is a lot of toast out there.

Magazine Death Pool.

Newspapers & Magazines are most trusted for election information...

...say C-level executives in America. This research is

based on in-depth interviews with more than 30 "C-level" executives at companies exceeding $1 billion in revenue and representing a diverse geographic and industry base.

"Even though it is well documented that the print media has been steadily losing ground in recent years, it is arguably the most influential source of information on important topics for CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives," said Eva Schmatz, president, SUMMUS Limited. "There is a lot more life in this channel than people give credit."

Down to Zero

"When we started out two years ago people were holding onto their content and weren't seeing value of link for reward rather than payment for reward", Davies says.

"Paid [for] content will die a death in the mainstream, and we're getting closer. People are [now] starting to realise that.

"That's how we're able to do these kind of [licensing] deals now."

Were they ahead of the curve? "We assumed this is where it was going – it's what the music industry has done," he says.

Idiomag, co-founder, Andrew Davies, tells Journalism.co.uk that in launching two years ago he:

'wanted to apply this concept of personalisation to the consumer [magazine] industry'.