1 Keynote Speech for FIPP Conference— Richard M. Smith--Chairman/Editor-in-Chief Newsweek Magazine Seoul, Korea April 2002 Thank you. I am tempted to recall what President Abraham Lincoln said after receiving a similarly generous introduction: “Don’t take the time to deny it. The audience will soon learn the truth for themselves.” Seriously, it’s a great pleasure to be with you this morning and see the faces of so many dear friends and good colleagues from all around the world. And it’s a special honor to lead off what promises to be an exciting and informative meeting in a country that has played such an important part in my own history. I first came to Seoul in 1975, when I was based in Hong Kong. I met a fascinating Korean - American professor on that visit. She was an anthropologist teaching at Ewha Women’s University just across town, and I took her to dinner to talk about the changing role of women in Korean society. The dinner went on my Newsweek expense account and, in a way, she’s been there ever since...because she’s been my wife for the last 24 years.
2 We’ve also extended our ties to Korea into the second generation. Thirteen years ago, we adopted a beautiful little Korean girl who has become the light of our lives. So you see, my roots here are deep and everlasting. As I thought about my talk this morning, I wanted to boil the message down into a few essential truths. The exercise made me think of one of the last interviews the great hotel magnate Conrad Hilton gave. The reporter went on and on about all the places Hilton had traveled and all the important people he’d met. Finally, he got to the question: “Mr. Hilton, after such a rich, full life, what is the single most important thing you’ve learned? Please, sir, share this wisdom with us.” The great hotel man thought for a moment...and said: “The shower curtain...INSIDE the tub. Put it INSIDE the tub.” Well, I can’t promise wisdom that deep, but I can deliver a message that flows every bit as much from my own personal and professional experience. That is: I believe in the power of magazines...and I believe in the future of magazines in Asia. Newsweek has, of course, been an active in the region for well over half a century--thanks to our English-language International edition. In the mid 1980s we shed the uniform of the visiting team and became a full-fledged player in the local market. That was the year when we entered into an
3 agreement with TBS-Britannica, a publishing subsidiary of the Suntory distilling company, to launch Newsweek Nihon Ban, a Japanese-language version of Newsweek designed specifically for the Japanese audience. We were largely flying blind. Nihon Ban was the first Newsweek published in another language, and it took nearly two years--and a lot of arguments over translation style, staffing, local content and seemingly everything else--to get into print. When the great day finally came, we held a huge launch party at Tokyo’s Okura Hotel. The Japanese Prime Minister was there. President Ronald Reagan delivered a televised message of congratulations. Mrs. Katharine Graham, the late chairman of Newsweek’s parent, the Washington Post Company, spoke... as did the American ambassador and Keizo Saji, the late chairman of Suntory. It was a remarkable East-West moment, and to wrap up the festivities, Chairman Saji stepped to the microphone and burst into song...a rousing rendition of the theme from the wild west television show “Rawhide.” When the distinguished chairman took off his shoes and slapped them together to make the sound of a cracking whip, I knew we were embarking on quite an adventure. We were not at all certain whether Japanese readers--with their huge national newspapers and a variety of lively domestic magazines--would want to read a foreign newsmagazine in translation. Well, happily for us and our very hardworking partners at TBS-B, they did. Newsweek Nihon
4 Ban was a success almost from the start. And today, it remains a bright niche in the Japanese magazine world, with a healthy 130,000 circulation. Our next step into the Asian market grew out of a phone call from Young-Hie Kim, a superb Korean journalist with JoonAng Ilbo--one of Korea’s leading newspaper and magazine companies. Young Hie was calling on behalf of Chairman Kun Hee Lee of Samsung, then the parent company of the JoongAng group. And he wanted to know whether we would be interested in Newsweek Hankuk Pan, a Korean-language version. We jumped at the chance. Hankuk Pan hit the newsstands in 1991 and it, too became a success story. Over the years, I’ve had the great pleasure of forging a strong friendship with JoonAng Ilbo’s thoughtful and dynamic chairman Dr. Seok Hyun Hong, and all of us at Newsweek have enjoyed--and learned from--our relationship with his fine company. From that strong Asian base, we went on to establish other non -English partnerships and editions...with Ideas & Capital for Newsweek en Espanol, the Kuwait-based Dar al Wataan group for Newsweek in Arabic, and just last year, with the Axel Springer group to produce Newsweek in Polish. Newsweek Polska has really been a remarkable story. Within two months of its debut last September, the Polish press was hailing the magazine as the number one
5 newsweekly in Poland. Averaging sales of about 300,000 copies each week, Newsweek Polska is now regularly beating the two long-established competing weeklies by a comfortable margin. But we never forgot about the Asia-Pacific region and its enormous potential. In addition to a longstanding content-sharing relationship with the Bulletin in Australia, we recently joined with our good friends at YBM-Si-sa here in Seoul to introduce Newsweek 21, an English-language learning magazine. In China, working with Sino-World Publications, we are rolling out a series of special-topic editions--translated into both simplified and traditional characters--for distribution not only on the mainland but in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore as well. And finally...well, I hope not finally...we are right now working on a similar series of single-topic editions to be published, beginning this summer, in Bahasa, the language of Indonesia. We have had the privilege of delivering--and sometimes teaching--our style of fair-minded, independent and aggressive journalism in some markets where the traditions have been far different. But in each case, I would have to say that we have learned every bit as much as we’ve taught. Above all, the chance to get even closer to other cultures and to work side-by-side with talented local journalists has helped inform all of Newsweek’s coverage in all of our editions, both domestic and international.
6 The exercise has also proved to be a great reminder of the strength of our brand --and of the importance of choosing partners who share our commitment to the highest standards of journalistic excellence and independence...and business and personal integrity. I must say our only disappointment has been our brief, two-year effort at producing a Russian -language magazine. And the failure there was not with our partners, but because of a politically-motivated change of ownership. Our efforts in Asia have only reaffirmed my enthusiasm for this market and the prospects of ALL magazines...both homegrown and imported...in the region. Some of the reasons are specific to Asia. While there are obvious variations from country to country, the tides of demographic change, economic growth and increasing educational opportunities are all fueling the expansion of a well-educated middle class--in other words, a burgeoning audience of precisely the kinds of readers who contribute to the circulation strength of magazines all around the world. Still, a large part of my optimism comes from that belief in the power of magazines--in any language, in any culture. On one level, of course, there’s the power of magazines as a hugely successful commercial machine...a mechanism with the ability to aggregate an attractive, attentive, paying audience...to deliver to them compelling, informative advertising messages and to spur that audience into action in the marketplace of products, services, and even ideas and public policy.
7 Let’s consider some facts about the market I know best, the United States. Despite a staggering proliferation of media outlets, Americans continue to buy magazines more than ever before--in fact at a rate of growth substantially higher than the growth of the overall population. Four out of five American households subscribe to magazines or purchase them on the newsstand. And each household buys an average of six different titles annually. How attractive is that audience? Advertisers vote with their dollars. In the last decade, advertising revenues have more than doubled--from a little less than $7 billion to nearly $18 billion annually. And, again, in the face of the growth of the Internet, cable television programming and other outlets, magazines have held their share of overall media spending at a roughly constant level. But numbers only tell part of the story. There is an even greater power in magazines: The power to enliven, enlighten and engage their readers in a way that almost no other commercial medium can. Indeed, it’s the kind of power that turns magazines into a vital and dynamic force in our societies...sometimes shaping, sometimes interpreting, always reflecting what is going on around us. Of course, magazines also make history. As Dick Stolley, the founding editor of People magazine, has pointed out, try to imagine the great social revolutions of the last half-century without the role played by magazines in either igniting them or fueling them.
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