Which Would You Choose?
Newsweek reveals the inexact science of capturing eyeballs By Maria Soldevila
ON the newsstands, they compete for your attention. Bright colors, bold letters, flashy headlines catch your eyes. Magazine readers talk about covers; some even collect them. How many times have you picked up and bought a magazine because you just had to read the story behind that riveting, intriguing cover?Conventional wisdom seems to be aligned with Richard B. Stolley’s “law of covers.” As the first managing editor of People, Stolley came up with the following set of rules for the face of a magazine: Young is better than old, beautiful is better than ugly, television is better than music, music is better than movies, movies are better than sports, anything is better than politics, and there is nothing better than a dead celebrity. But even Stolley thinks those rules are not necessarily relevant anymore. People’s first issue appeared on March 4, 1974. Twenty-eight years later, in February 2002, after he had become senior editorial adviser at Time Inc., Stolley told Folio the only rule he sticks to is the last one.
What makes a good cover—or a bad one? How do they come up with a design, with the headlines that will make us buy a particular magazine? Are they just thinking about making money? And who is “they”? Through one magazine’s cover selection process, we will show you how those covers that grab you by the lapels got to the newsstand—and why other others just didn’t make it.
The “they” at Newsweek starts with the editor, Mark Whitaker. He claims that in a news-oriented publication, the ad-sales department has no say in what goes on the cover. He says he refuses to look at readers’ polls and does not try to adjust his news judgment in order to increase sales. So, how does he choose what to publish and what to reject?
For the most part, two people—the editor and the cover director— decide what three million readers are going to see in the cover of Newsweek every week. The first step is a weekly cover meeting that takes place every Wednesday. In that meeting, the editors decide on the story that will be the face of the magazine that week. Two days later, the top editors make the final cover decision. Rick Smith, editor in chief; John Meacham, managing editor; and Dorothy Kalins, executive director; join Whitaker and Newsweek’s cover director, Bruce Ramsay, to pick their favorite.
Common sense plays a key role in cover selection. “It has to be a subject we can photograph or illustrate in some way,” says Ramsay, the man responsible for coming up with images and concepts that satisfy Whitaker’s demands for absolute clarity. “What I’m looking for as a designer is poster-quality for the cover, something clean and strong—something people would want to save, and maybe even keep and frame as a poster.”
For Newsweek, newsstand sales constitute only 5 percent of total circulation. It may sound like a small amount, but when Whitaker and his cadre make the call, they are thinking about subscribers, but also about what might attract the 150,000 readers who decide to buy Newsweek on the newsstand—and maybe push that average number up.
Here are the stories of four covers that ended up in the trashcan. If you had the power to decide, which ones would you have run? Which would you have rejected?
The Viagra Story
Old covers of Newsweek adorn the
walls of Whitaker’s sixteenth-floor
office. He likes to think of them
as posters. An exception sits on a
shelf, however, next to the doorway.
Of his collection, this mockcover
is one that never made it to
the newsstands. It was rejected,
but Whitaker keeps it as a
reminder. When he sees it, he
remembers that sometimes it’s
OK to take risks.On November 17, 1997, Newsweek ran a story about a magic drug called Viagra. “The New Science of Impotence: Can It Be Cured With a Pill?” says the headline on the cover on Whitaker’s shelf. The word “impotence” is in bold, threatening capital letters. Accompanying it, a delicate pink flower, drooping—the graphic device Ramsay thought fit the concept. Whitaker, then substituting as editor, was cautious. “I thought it was too edgy, too playful, too irreverent—of course, I wasn’t the editor yet, and I didn’t want to take the risk. I thought it could have been offensive to our readers who had that problem.”
Ramsay didn’t regret trying out the flower image, but he said, “That cover was not going to do well on the newsstands. No man was going to walk around with that in his hands.”
Whitaker opted to run a picture of a stack of pills, a move that he swore to never repeat. To him, an image with pills is simply not attractive enough. He broke that oath, though, on April 9, 2001, when Newsweek ran a cover about painkillers.
Pretty vs. Newsy
On March 18, 2002, Whitaker
and Ramsay came up with one of
those “poster-quality” covers that
they love so much. Since
September 11, 2001, hard news
had dominated Newsweek’s cover,
but there was an entertainment
story about an HBO series that
caught Whitaker’s attention—the
pictures were beautiful, the story
was fun and Whitaker knew that
TV stories sell well. He even came
up with a catchy cover line: “Why
We Dig ‘Six Feet Under.’” While
they were working on it, however,
eight American soldiers were
killed in Afghanistan. Editors
waffled on which cover to run but
ultimately chose to feature news
from the war. For Ramsay, the lesson
was simple: “Never fall in love
with your layouts.”
Looking Scary
 |  |  |
For the March 24, 2003 issue,
Newsweek’s cover had a provocative
headline: “Why America Scares
the World.” Bruce Ramsay, cover
director, said his challenge was to
find an image that represented
America’s threatening power. He
gave his editor, Mark Whitaker,
three choices. First, a globe with
an almost-world-size United
States painted in black. (Ramsay
secretly liked this one most). Second, a muscular arm sporting an American flag tattoo. Third, a weapon called MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast, or the Mother of All Bombs) shown with a satellite picture of Earth. Which of the three ran on that week? The bomb. Not only was it as threatening as an image could get, it was also newsworthy. The attack against Iraq was imminent, and the MOAB was being touted as this war’s Tomahawk. |
Misleading Images
A cover needs to get attention,
but it should not be scandalous.
When Newsweek decided to do a
cover story on the controversy
over stem-cell research, it was a
particularly tough challenge.
How could they illustrate the
dimensions of the tiny cells?They tried magnifying the tip of a pin to give the reader a sense of proportion. But the enlarged pin came out looking too much like something else. The pin had become pornographic. Ramsay spent hours Photoshopping the pin so that it would not look like, um, a penis. After three versions, the editors’ consensus was that Newsweek’s readers would not see it as a porno pin—Photoshop had worked its magic and their cover wasn’t hard-core anymore.
But before going to press, someone in the office took the image home to show it to his wife to get a fresh perspective. The result? That week, Newsweek ran the stem-cell cover showing only cells—no pin.