How Newsweek, with revenues approaching nine figures, achieved an improbable turnaround

The general publisher News weekwho turns 93 next month, generated $90 million in revenue at a 20 percent profit margin last year, the clearest evidence yet of the business turnaround underway at one of the news organizations the most historic in the United States.

The 2024 revenue figure alone more than quadruples the sales Newsweek generated in 2018, when current CEO and co-owner Dev Pragad took over the company’s operations. That year, Newsweek generated $20 million in revenue but had a 10% loss margin.

Since then, the editor engineered one of the most unlikely reinventions of the digital media era, navigating a lengthy legal battle while creating a massive digital footprint that allowed the company to generate robust programmatic revenue.

It has been profitable on an EBITDA basis since 2019, has generated profit margins above 20% since 2022 and was profitable on a standalone basis in 2024, according to Pragad.

“Our mindset is that we are grateful to have had the opportunity to transform this business,” Pragad said. “We have paid close attention to detail, which has allowed us to move from a position of strength to a position of strength as we work to diversify our business.”

With the distractions of its past largely settled, Newsweek now looks to the future. The company returned to profitability largely thanks to a strong digital advertising business, which accounted for 63% of its revenue in 2024, but it plans to launch and grow a handful of new business lines in the months to come.

Audience growth and new features

Newsweek owes much of its current momentum to steady audience growth, which runs counter to the readership decline plaguing much of the news media.

Pragad attributes the increase largely to Newsweek’s data-driven editorial approach, using audience preferences to determine what is covered and how. Yet many newsrooms employ a similar strategy but have not seen such consistent growth, according to Ameet Shah, Prohaska Consulting partner and senior vice president of publisher operations and technology strategy.

Audience appeal also comes from using Reddit as a hub for its distribution strategy.

Since September 2023, when Google unveiled its Useful Content update, Reddit has significantly increased its visibility on search engines. By organically linking to its reporting in popular Reddit forums, such as r/politics, Newsweek saw a traffic boon.

In December 2024, for example, the publisher saw nearly 20% of its overall traffic come from Reddit alone, according to Similarweb data. Most publishers expect to generate a single-digit percentage of their total traffic from the platform. or not at all.

The 300-person company also introduced several on-site features designed to encourage reader engagement and time spent.

A partnership with Google AI unveiled in October resulted in an improved recommendation algorithm, suggesting readers related articles responsible for between 300,000 and 500,000 additional page views per month in November, according to Pragad. Likewise, the publisher took care to highlight reader comments on the home page (about 10,000 are posted daily, according to Josh Awtry, senior vice president of audience development) to encourage its audience to get involved in Newsweek’s reporting.

In October 2023, it also began attaching a fairness indicator to its articles, asking readers to rate the biases they perceived in its reporting.

Since its debut, readers have submitted more than 3.5 million votes, with 70% rating the articles fair, according to Awtry. This tool, along with other features like The Daily Debate, help emphasize the centrist approach Newsweek takes in its reporting.

“Pageview generation is really interesting and it’s hard to pinpoint why it’s so successful,” Shah said. “This suggests that the peripheral aspects – recommendations, fairness, feedback – are features that resonate. »

Past legal controversy

In addition to spurring growth, Newsweek faced its own series of internal criminal scandals.

The problems stem from Newsweek’s former owner, International Business Times, which acquired Newsweek in 2013. In January 2018, IBT founder Etienne Uzac was investigated for money laundering involving Olivet University, an American university, and The Community, a church. once accused of being a cult.

In 2018, IBT created Newsweek as an independent entity jointly owned by Pragad and Jonathan Davis, currently CEO of IBT. In July 2022, IBT sued Pragad and the holding group that runs Newsweek, seeking to undo the 2018 deal.

This action was dismissed in December 2022, after which IBT appealed the decision in June 2023. The appeals court rejected the appeal and reaffirmed the validity of the contract authorizing the split, according to public legal documents. In September 2024, the controversy passed the six-year statute of limitations, preventing IBT from asserting further claims.

The multi-year saga has weighed on Newsweek financially, in addition to absorbing the attention of its editorial staff, which carefully covered the melodramaand its management team. Newsweek’s debt from its stake in IBT also forced the publisher to manage its costs strictly, leading to criticism of his practices at the time.

New and expanded professions

The company has since freed itself of its financial and legal burdens and is now focused on using its growing profitability to build for the future. Chief among these priorities is a set of business objectives.

First, it aims to increase the share of its advertising revenue generated by direct efforts, according to sales manager Danielle Varvaro.

In 2024, it generated approximately 80% of its advertising revenue from programmatic and 20% from direct sales. In 2025, the company is targeting 60% and 40% respectively by developing its business-to-business advertising operations, verticalizing its non-news content and working with relevant brands.

At the heart of this effort is a burgeoning events business, which Newsweek only began monetizing last year. In October, the company hired Megan Knapp, who led experience at Digiday for 10 years, to grow the new division. The company aims to host 30 events this year.

This push into advertising and business-to-business events coincides with another major Newsweek initiative: its rankings business, which uses Newsweek’s reports to rank companies in its non-news content and then monetizes the rankings with brand licensing deals. .

This division is the fastest-growing part of Newsweek’s business over the past two years, and by 2024 it represented 13% of Newsweek’s overall revenue, according to Pragad. Content syndication accounts for about 16% of its revenue.

The company has also begun exploring a series of potential subscription efforts.

Nonetheless, the company plans to approach all of its new ventures with an iterative mindset, as part of its broader emphasis on experimentation.

“Just because you have a plan doesn’t mean it’s going to work: You try ten things and you’re lucky if two or three work,” Pragad said. “The real question is: what do you do with these learnings? I think our team is good at this.