The publisher of Newsbeat proposed to decrease the emphasis on international news and refrain from displaying such stories on the magazine covers based on three reasons, which weren't substantial enough and will be analyzed follow.
To begin, the first reason the publisher given is the poorest-selling issues over the past three years were those that featured international news stories on their front covers. As we known, there are many factors which contribute to the magazine selling, the topic of cover story, plays an important role in attracting the readers though, may be not the dominant one among the factors. What more, considering the selling status of all issues in the past there years, are there any well-selling issues which also placed international news stories on their front covers? And what are the most common differences between the poor-selling issues and the well-selling ones? Comparing in this way can help to find the factors affecting the magazine market and the role of cover topic played.
Second, the publisher said the competing news-magazines have significantly decreased the number of cover stories that they devote to international news. However, he didn’t mention the effect of the change taken by the news-magazines. Further, given the news-magazines are more popular than before, had they taken any other measures except changing the topic of cover story to prod the selling? So it hard to sure the competing news-magazines got a good selling by diminishing the number of the cover stories concentrating on international affairs.
Finally, the increasing cost of maintaining international bureaus couldn’t be served to decrease the international reports. If the abroad branches are closed, the magazine will cover the domestic news only or find the alternatives to report international affairs. We need to ponder on following questions: the input and output of covering international affairs and the expenses of alternate approaches. It’s unwise to quit international bureaus when the reports of international news are the readers’ favor and the abroad bureaus provide valuable international news in an economy way. So, the full understanding on the value of international affairs and the compare of payments of each ways covering the abroad news are needed before making decision on whether continue to report the abroad affairs and whether maintain the abroad bureaus.
Overall, before decreasing the emphasis on international news and refraining from displaying such stories on the magazine covers, the publisher should research the reasons affecting the magazine selling and evaluate the contribution and cost of international news.作者: currycat 时间: 2009-6-4 23:26:36