About 20% of Newsweek's staff took a recent job buyout offer, according to a Wall Street Journal story today. That's a pretty big number, but nothing all that new in the news business.

The real news IMHO is the fact that magazines publishing on a weekly basis still exist at all.

Think about it. TIME. Newsweek. BusinessWeek. Just about the only thing that differentiates them is their weekly schedule.

Now, once upon a time this was indeed a differentiator. But today, with both up-to-the-minute news and context/opinion available from myriad sources, what's the point of a "weekly?" The Journal story picked up on this point somewhat:

Cable news and the Web have sapped Time and Newsweek of much of their audience in recent years, crowding out their exclusive hold on certain kinds of stories, including analyses and detailed retellings of major news events. As the Internet has also given rise to a new generation of multiplatform, self-branded news personalities. It no longer takes two decades at Newsweek to be a brand-name pundit.

With all the new distribution available, pegging a publication's existence on its ability to deliver on any schedule is a foolish proposition. There's got to be more to attract readers today. And when the readers leave, so too will the advertisers.

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