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The general interest publisher Newsweek, which turns 93 years old next month, generated $90 million in revenue at a profit margin of 20% last year, the clearest evidence yet of the commercial turnaround afoot at one of the most historic news organizations in the U.S.
The 2024 revenue alone more than quadruples the sales Newsweek generated in 2018, when current chief executive and co-owner Dev Pragad took over operations at the company. That year, Newsweek generated $20 million in revenue but at a loss margin of 10%.
Since then, the publisher has engineered one of the more unlikely reinventions of the digital media era, slogging through a protracted legal battle while building an enormous digital footprint that has enabled the company to generate robust programmatic revenue.
It has been profitable on an EBITDA basis since 2019, generated profit margins north of 20% since 2022, and was profitable on a standalone basis in 2024, according to Pragad.
“The mindset we have is that we are grateful that we had the opportunity to transform this business,” Pragad said. “We focused on attention to detail, which has allowed us to move from a position of strength to strength as we work to diversify the business.”
With the distractions of its past largely settled, Newsweek has now turned its eye to the future. The company has found profitability largely thanks to a solid digital advertising business, which made up 63% of its revenue in 2024, but it has plans to launch and grow a handful of new lines of business in the coming months.
Audience growth and new features
Newsweek owes much of its current momentum to its steady audience growth, which runs counter to the declining readership plaguing much of the news media.
Pragad attributes the increase largely to Newsweek’s data-driven approach to editorial, using audience preference to determine what is covered and how. Still, many newsrooms employ a similar strategy but have not experienced such consistent growth, according to Prohaska Consulting partner and senior vice president of publisher operations and tech strategy Ameet Shah.