Newsweek: What went wrong?

Stewart then asked the million dollar question: “Why does TIME get to live?”

“I admire TIME magazine. They’re part of a larger magazine company,” Meacham said. “We need sources of revenue. Other magazines, they can share a back office, they can share overhead. We’ve made it as hard as possible. We’re a one-magazine company – about the news, general interest –at a time when people don’t want to pay a whole lot of money for that news. Therefore, the advertising falls off.”

Asked by Stewart about the business model of a once-weekly news magazine that analyzes the events people are “submerged in” all week long, Meacham acknowledged the end is near.

“We’ve had it backwards,” he said. “We produce a magazine all week – we close it Friday and Saturday – and it begins to go out online. … We have Newsweek.com every day, but [for] 77 years, the emphasis has been on the print. It’s probably time to flip that. In which you are solely focused on the digital, and by the end of the week you take the best of, and for people who want to hold a magazine in their hands – and there are people who can still do that … then you print that magazine.”