The Week



April 28, 2001

BOB GARFIELD: Flamboyant British publisher Dennis Felix [sp?] made his first splash with Maxim, a cleavage-heavy mens' magazine that has been phenomenally successful on two continents. Then came the British news digest called The Week, a breezily-written distillation of the week's news including editorial comments from other publications around the world. It was a runaway success in England. An American version of The Week has just been launched, and like its British namesake, the U.S. edition is something on the order of Time Magazine Meets Reader's Digest. William Falk [sp?] is the editor and he joins us now.

BOB GARFIELD: Well first of all I want to tell you that I love, love, love, love, love your magazine. I think it's absolutely fabulous.

WILLIAM FALK: Oh, that's so exciting to hear. We're, we're getting a lot of really great reaction.

BOB GARFIELD:Good. Now for the attack. You may have observed that there is a media depression in progress [LAUGHS] that developed like 5 minutes before your launch.

WILLIAM FALK: Yes.

BOB GARFIELD: Nice timing.

WILLIAM FALK: Yes. The timing was-- I guess fortuitous in a, in a way. A lot of people questioned why we were launching when we were launching for that very reason, but-- I think the, The Week is very well-timed, because the concept of the magazine is that it's, it's really aimed at people who are extremely busy and yet who are curious about the world and feel a need to be informed, and part of the beauty of The Week I think is that we make a lot of choices for readers and we say we're going to distill the best of what's out there, and so even if you didn't get through your daily paper today or you didn't read that nice pile of New Yorkers and Economists by your bed stand, that you still won't have missed out; you'll know what people are talking about and what happened.

BOB GARFIELD: What's the longest story that will appear in The Week?

WILLIAM FALK: Well they're short, short little items, of course, but most of them are from the 250 to 500 word range.

BOB GARFIELD:So really this magazine is not designed for people who have a stack of Economists by their bed stand. It's for people who are getting all of their information elsewhere like the evening news or -- oh, I don't know - God help us - Maxim.

WILLIAM FALK: [LAUGHS] We haven't done any scientific readership surveys of this magazine yet, but my very own informal survey -- I mean we have gotten rave reviews on this from people such as yourself; from doormen; from my babysitter last week -- it really does have a very broad appeal.

BOB GARFIELD:I'm happy to hear that you've got the doorman/babysitter/part-time radio host demographic covered, but The Week strikes me as being unusual in magazine launches in that it isn't going for the upscale 18 to 34 year old the way every other media property seems to be doing.

WILLIAM FALK: No, actually we do intend to be rather upscale. In the UK where this magazine was initiated 5 years ago, they have a very high demographic in a nation where people actually read more than they do here and it's read there largely there by political leaders; it's read in Parliament. Apparently Tony Blair reads it, and the opposition reads it.

BOB GARFIELD:In, in the 3 issues you've done has there been any story that was -- you found particularly dicey to get into such a small-- space allotted to it?

WILLIAM FALK: Oh, I, I suppose McCain-Feingold was a, a rather difficult issue to distill into 500 words.

BOB GARFIELD: What's the cleavage situation? Will we be seeing cleavage? I mean this is after all Son-of-Maxim.

WILLIAM FALK: Well I don't think it's Son-of-Maxim. It's a distant relative of Maxim. There will be pictures of attractive women and men in the magazine occasionally as there are in all publications, because we all like to look at attractive women and men. But primarily, you know, our covers depict people like George Bush and Tim McVeigh and people who are not big newstand sellers as you say.

BOB GARFIELD: William Falk, thanks for joining us!

WILLIAM FALK: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: William Falk is the editor of The Week, a new magazine from the people who brought you Maxim.