Newsweek staffers, having suffered through layoffs and the struggle for the title’s future, have to endure yet another loss: their new offices.
Scarcely a year after they moved from their unglamorous Midtown offices to cushier Tribeca digs, staffers were told they would have to pack up again, to relocate uptown.
Newsweek will trade places with Washington Post Co. sibling Kaplan, the test-prep unit, which is outgrowing its Midtown space, according to a March 31 staff memo from Newsweek chief executive Tom Ascheim.
Staffers will make the move in August from 395 Hudson St. to Kaplan’s current space at 888 7th Ave., down the street from Newsweek’s old digs.
In the interim, Newsweek employees will have to endure construction and some internal relocation to make room for incoming Kaplan employees.
Ascheim tried to put a positive spin on the news, pointing out that after the move, staffers will be closer to Central Park.
The news comes at a particularly tough time for the newsweekly. Ad pages fell 26 percent to 1,117 in 2009. With ad revenue declining, the title cut its rate-base guarantee twice in the past year, to 1.5 million in January from 2.6 million a year earlier.
How ironic that both the Washington Post and Newsweek - which are publications at the nexus of the education deform movement with eduwankers like Jay Matthews and "reporters" like Evan Thomas pushing for the privatization of public schools, the wide expansion of charter schools and the busting of teachers unions - are owned by test preparation company/for-profit school operator Kaplan.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Even more ironic that Thomas, who says "bad" teachers who do not raise the test scores of their students need to be fired immediately can't seem to keep the circulation or the revenue of his weekly "news" magazine from plummeting.
Under his own guidelines for teachers, Thomas ought to be fired for failure.
I believe it was Thomas (or his headline writers) who said about teaching: "In no other profession are workers so insulated from accountability."
I dunno, given the performance of Newsweek over the past few years, that anybody from the editorial board has still got a job looks like a failure of accountability to me.
But I have a feeling that oversight will be rectified soon enough.
Moving the test prep unit to Newsweek's office and moving Newsweek to where Kaplan used to be - that's a sign, I'll tell you what.
Maybe after they finally shut Newsweek down, Thomas and the others at the magazine can go into test prep.
No, they will open a charter school and become school administrators.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe Matthews and Thomas can become ELA teachers and show us how to teach to that good ol' test. After all, "those who can, do: and those who can't, teach". It would seem that Thomas no canna do.
ReplyDeleteAnxious parents and Anxious students are more profitable than a magazine anyone can look at online. Kaplan offers a test guarantee
ReplyDeleteand an online component which kids really like. Now if Newsweek would have a cnsistent educational insert in its magazine taking advantage of its Kaplan connection it would hit that same market
and increase its circulation, and web visits. Just tap into that anxiety
and perpetuate the myth that learning how to take a test means something.
They ARE tapping into that anxiety by constantly knocking union teachers...this media is creating the notion that the current crop of veteran teachers are inferior..and worse.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Kaplan's success only shows how much money there is to be made when full privitzation occurs...it's a goldmine.
It does speak to the "independence" of the eduwankers and columnists at Fred Hiatt's crayon page that they are so pro-reform at the Post and owned by a company that benefits financially from those reforms.
ReplyDelete