The Week: Aggregating Profit

Earlier today we told you about how niche newsweekly magazines were all the rage. One of those magazines, The Week, gets profiled in today’s New York Times. In the piece it’s revealed that The Week made a profit of $4 million last year and is currently on pace to beat that mark.

So how is The Week – a magazine that employs under twenty staffers for its print edition – able to make money in such a bad time for the industry? By gathering news from hundreds of sources, then packaging them into tiny stories for each issue. In other words – Bill Keller, please stop reading now – aggregation:

The magazine identifies hot topics from the week before and publishes excerpts from a variety of news articles and opinion columns on each topic. It also excerpts film and book reviews and obituaries. A feature called ‘Best properties on the market’ allows readers to lust after gorgeous homes. A more serious feature called ‘How they see us’ translates reports from foreign publications few Americans would ever stumble on.

Now isn’t that something?

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