Curry's marching orders: Crank up the copy
By Jeff Bercovici
Sunday magazines are a bit like the earth's tectonic plates: colossal, slow to change, ponderous even, but always in motion, moving in opposition, if so slowly as to go unnoticed by readers and media buyers.
But for Jack Curry, this slow-motion clash of the titans is where it’s at. Curry is the new executive editor of USA Weekend, recently hustled away from TV Guide.
Big, if not better, is different.
"I’ve worked for a magazine with a circulation of 11 million," says Curry, referring to TV Guide, where he was managing editor for the past 10 years.
"Then I got invited to work for one that goes to 25 million households. The similarity in reach was a big attraction for me," says Curry. "That was primarily what got my foot in the door. "
Curry's mission is to make USA Weekend a more compelling read.
"Our circulation is larger than most top 20 primetime shows get. But is USA Weekend creating water-cooler talk at the office? No. But it should."
"Right now, we’re a tree falling in the forest," says Curry. "I want to make sure people hear us."
USA Weekend, which is published by Gannett, is truly mammoth, appearing in 560 Sunday newspapers and claiming nearly 43 million total readers.
Larger still is Parade magazine, which distributes 37 million issues every Sunday, reaching 82 million readers, according to the magazine’s web site.
Together, these two giants dominate the field, but of late they've seen a rise in competition, and both are feeling pressure to freshen up what they offer 100 million readers each Sunday morning.
The Wall Street Journal has recently introduced its own supplement to the Sunday business sections of 10 large dailies including the Orange County Register, the Sacramento Bee, the New Orleans Times Picayune and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. There are plans to expand to still others in coming weeks.
Launched quietly in September, Wall Street Journal Sunday has a circulation of 4.3 million. With its personal finance/investment and career advice format, it sees itself competing for advertisers primarily against Money, Kiplinger's, Business Week and other publications offering investment advice.
By contrast, USA Weekend and Parade compete for mass markets advertisers wanting to reach readers with far more modest demographics. Traditionally, it's been a friendly competition, with Parade circulating in more urban markets while USA Weekend dominated in smaller cities and rural America.
Some large national advertisers, such as Wal-Mart, do most of their business outside big cities, and they look to publications like USA Weekend to reach their consumers, says Curry.
The readers of USA Weekend and Parade, Curry says, are "very similar. It’s the newspaper reading population."
Bu maintaining that readership is an increasingly onerous task, and the Sunday Wall Street Journal is only symptomatic of the larger problem: Sunday morning has gone from bacon and eggs and a flop on the couch with the local paper to a time of major media bombardment, with the internet and cable leading.
"Maintaining readership is hard," says Curry. "In that respect, Sunday papers are no different from regular papers. The challenge we face, and it’s the same challenge we faced at TV Guide, is how to maintain our core readers, who are getting older, while at the same time bringing in the next generation of readers."
Making things more difficult is that the next generation will be the first one to have grown up with the internet as an alternative to papers.
Nevertheless, though Curry notes the diminishing influence of such institutions as the funny pages, ultimately, he says, "I don’t believe the web is a challenge to [Sunday paper] readership. I think people want something they can hold in their hands on Sunday morning while they drink their coffee."
Indeed, Curry sees the internet as a potential boon to papers that learn to harness its power.
"We need to find ways to use it to channel readership to the paper. Part of my editorship is going to involve making sure there is a robust energy and synergy between the print product and the digital product."
-Jeff Bercovici s a staff writer for Media Life.