Newsweek Cuts Back Number of Issues: Will Anyone Notice?

This should probably drive their value down to about 95 cents.

The partners behind Newsweek Daily Beast Company appear to be holding down the flow of red ink this summer by cutting back on the number of Newsweek issues.

This past Monday started a dark week for the newsweekly. It now appears that it will be one of four dark weeks for the summer -- two more than Tina Brown planned.

The original editorial calendar showed only one dark week, surrounding the July 4 weekend.

Staffers now have been told that they will not have to work the week of July 18-22 since no issue will appear on July 25. They also can spend a little extra time at the beach the week of Aug. 15-19, since there will now be no issue on Aug. 22.

This rag continues to hemorrhage ad pages. One wonders what the point is continuing to print.

Through the June 14 issue, Newsweek saw its ad page sales in 2011 fall 23 percent, to 299.03 pages, from 388.15 pages over the same period a year earlier, according to Media Industry Newsletter.