Roberta Garfinkle, SVP, director of Print Strategy for media shop TargetCast, agrees, saying that consumers and advertisers don’t pay close attention to a pub’s ownership. There might be some concern if the magazine were to do a another complete overhaul, but there is no sign that Newsweek will undergo any severe cutbacks and alterations at the moment. She also said that there was nothing unique in Newsweek’s situation that would suddenly drive advertisers away.

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Still, there’s no getting around the latest Publishers Information Bureau figures, which had Newsweek’s ad pages down 20.4 percent, while the total for all mags in the survey declined only 9.4 percent. In the meantime, as Washington Post Co. chairman and CEO Don Graham told our Staci D. Kramer earlier, even with those print declines, digital revs remain paltry in comparison. As Graham noted, “The print product has almost $160 million in revenue; the digital product had $8 million last year.”

“I don’t think Newsweek has any special problems,” Garfinkle said. “The problems are the same across the board. Ad budgets are not what they used to be. When you talk about Newsweek’s ad pages being off, they were cutting in half and going after more upscale audience. While that sounds good, it could have had an affect on some advertisers who might have been looking for tonnage.” She insisted that marketers she works with continue to advertise in the mag, though she said she was not authorized to identify any.

The relevance of newsweeklies in a day and age when the content of a daily newspaper is considered ancient history by the time it hits the stands is increasingly uncertain. Still, there are some weeklies that are making it work, such as The Week, The Economist, said Tim Hanlon, a partner at digital strategy consultancy Catalyst S+F. “Those magazines have deftly evolved,” he said. “The Economist is thriving—their digital efforts have done a great job of augmenting the printed product, which remains top-notch. And look at Politico, which essentially started as an online operation and has quickly grown into a multi-media brand that includes print. The iPad and other tablet devices may just be the kick many other publications need to similarly stay relevant.”