With the introduction of its service on AOL, NEWSWEEK will add an important component to its new-media presence, which includes CD-ROMs such as the recently released “Parent’s Guide to Children’s Software” and “Electionline,” the political-news site on the World Wide Web jointly operated by our sister publication The Washington Post, NEWSWEEK and ABC News (http://www.electionline.com). NEWSWEEK on AOL will maintain the editorial and design standards that led Advertising Age magazine to call NEWSWEEK on the Prodigy service “among the most ambitious ventures” by any publisher in the online world.
NEWSWEEK is helping to launch the first real weekly news magazine to be published in Russian. It will be called ITOGI (Summing-up) and will make its debut in late April, just in time to cover the critical Russian presidential election this June. NEWSWEEK’S partner in this venture is the Moscow-based MOST Group, which already publishes a daily newspaper and owns a radio station. In addition, it operates NTV television, which reaches 102 million people in Russia. NTV carries a highly successful weekly program, also called ITOGI, on political affairs.
The new magazine will have a design and format similar to NEWSWEEK’S. Some of the contents will be translated from NEWSWEEK; other stories Will be reported and written by ITOGI’s staff of 50. “The emerging Russian marketplace offers enormous challenges,” says Richard M. Smith, Editor-in-Chief and President of NEWSWEEK. “Under The MOST Group’s leadership, ITOGI has assembled a first-rate team of editorial and business professionals.” Initially, the magazine will be distributed in Moscow and St. Petersburg; it will soon be extended to other large cities west of the Urals.
ITOGI will be NEWSWEEK’S fourth edition in a language other than English. NEWSWEEK has been published in Japanese since 1986 and in Korean since 1991. A Spanish-language edition, to be distributed primarily in Latin America, will begin publication later this year.
