Back in print again! But Newsweek bosses don't like religious jibes

As the New York Times said yesterday, “Break out the banner headline: Newsweek Is Back From the Dead!"

The only thing troubling founders Etienne Uzac, 30, and Johnathan Davis, 31, is that when IBT bought Newsweek, the two came came under scrutiny for their religious ties.

Christianity Today’ on its website tied the two to a Korean pastor named David Jang,. The article described Jang as a controversial, messianic figure.

Davis and Uzac say they are dismayed that their religion has become an issue. They admire Jang, they told the NYT,, and acknowledge that Davis’s wife works at a university Jang started.

They said . Jang had no financial stake in IBT or influence on the business, and the idea that they considered him the messiah was "preposterous."

“My faith is my faith, the work is the work,”. Uzac said. “The editorial is 100 percent independent.”Jim Impoco, the magazine’s editor, said he had not seen any religious or conservative agenda.

“Since I’ve been here I’ve had less interference than any other place I’ve worked, I’ve written more stories on atheism than anything religious.”

IBT Media, at first saw Newsweek as a profitable web-only magazine. But when they tripled its online traffic, they had a rethink. And now the presses are to roll again

Jim Impoco at company’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan. said ““We had no real plans to bring it back into print, We called it the p-word.”

But Uzac said readers wanted them back in print . “I had heard it would not be viable, but then I looked into it and decided we could sell some copies for significantly more than it cost to make,” he said.

Newsweek now plans to print 70,000 copies — at its peak two decades ago, circulation was 3.3 million — and sell them for $7.99 each. The magazine’s content will also be also available online more cheaply.

“You would pay only if you don’t want to read anything on a backlit screen,” according to Uzac. “It is a luxury product.”

Steven Cohn, editor in chief of Media Industry Newsletter, said Newsweek’s decision to print the magazine made good business sense.

“The print magazine is kind of a prop to give the web better exposure,” he said. “For Newsweek, having a cover can have its advantages. You can appear on ‘Meet the Press.’ Celebrities and politicians like being on actual covers on the newsstand. They have stripped the costs way down. So really, what do they have to lose?”

But said the Times, Newsweek’s reappearance in print comes at a “fraught moment for the industry” . Time Inc. — parent of longtime rival Time magazine recently laid off roughly 500 people to cut costs.

“They have got a really tough road to revive a ghost brand,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Newsonomics. “They are looking for really high prices and in a market where they have a lot general competitors.”

Newsweek was founded in 1933. The Washington Post, controlled by the Graham family, acquired Newsweek in 1961. It was successful for decades but during the Internet era it began to struggle.

In 2010, businessman Sidney Harman bought it for $1 and took on $40 million in liabilities. He teamed with Barry Diller and invested heavily in the magazine in a failed attempt to revitalize the brand, putting Tina Brown in charge. She spent freely but now she has gone.

Uzac and Davis met after college through campus Christian fellowships. They started the website International Business Times in 2006,with rmoney from family and friends. Uzac sold ads; Davis wrote articles.. By 2010, IBT had 10 employees and revenue of roughly $2 million,.

It was then that IBT began using metrics to help tailor coverage to what readers wanted.

"

"We were getting cues back from our audience,” Davis said.

Dry corporate-earnings articles larded with financial data, for example, were poorly read. But Mr. Davis discovered that readers landed on earnings pieces by searching for a company’s products. So IBT began to de-emphasize numbers in earnings stories while highlighting a company’s product pipeline.

That sort , said The Times, helped traffic increase 1,200 percent in 2010, Mr. Davis said. Today, IBT has 240 employees and 40 million unique monthly visitors across 10 brands, with titles like Latin Times and Medical Daily.

the privately held company had revenue of about $21 million last year, largely from digital banner ads, and generated a profit of about $500,000.Only five staff members from Ms. Brown’s Newsweek were offered jobs by IBT, and most of the current staff members are relatively young and not yet established.