• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, October 8, 2024

Newsweek is seeing a massive growth in web traffic, in part by leaning into politics. 

Over the past six months, the title has tripled the size of the political team and published over 8,000 political stories, garnering over 350 million views, outpacing even the broader site’s traffic growth. 

In August 2024 alone, readership of political coverage skyrocketed by more than 150% year over year, with political content surging from 32 million page views to 86 million, fueled largely by search.

But what happens in 2025—beyond the seeming “Trump bump?”

The publication will be putting “a larger halo” around the issues, focusing on cultural and bread-and-butter topics as the election is in the rearview mirror, says Josh Awtry, senior vice president, audience development. 

“We’re not covering it for Washington aficionados,” he says. 

And the product that does not have a paywall is considering a registration wall. “If they're not willing to give us their email address, they’re not going to give us a credit card number either,” Awtry argues. 

Meanwhile, there are new, more premium experiences being offered.  

Case in point: a newsletter called Geoscapes on global geopolitics. Launched only a month ago, it has drawn over 150,000 people with an open rate of 33%—“pretty good for a newsletter on global wonkiness,” Awtry says. 

Sponsored by single advertiser, the Kia auto brand, Geoscapes sums up what is happening in the biggest geopolitical hotspots and includes analysis from experts in each of the areas. There is no clicking—“the newsletter is the destination,” Awtry explains. It launched with a frequency of twice a week, but is moving to three times per week and it may go higher. 

Then there’s 1600, a newsletter devoted to political coverage. It isn’t quite as large.

Newsweek has a mere 14,000 paid digital subscribers without really doing any marketing. But it has “over one million people in our email world,” Awtry says. 

But the product draws so many comments that it has hired a comment manager.

Who’s the news competition? USA Today and The Washington Post. Not Time, as it was in the days when there were two big newsweeklies. 

“We’re a 90-year-old brand, but we function like a startup,” Awtry says. The newsroom has 200 people, and the whole firm under 500.

“Everybody’s doing the dishes, and it’s a lot of fun,” he laughs.