Two wildly different takes on the same Newsweek newsstand figures suggest Tina Brown is as divisive a figure as she ever was.
Business Insider said the 50,000 average for the first half of 2011 means the weekly is “turning around.” Before she started it was around 39,000, and ad pages have doubled compared to this issue last year, they pointed out.
Adweek, on the other hand, consults a second (albeit anonymous) industry source, who claims lower newsstand figures than those Newsweek provided to the Audit Bureau of circulation, and points out that some of the most talked about covers–Princess Diana at 50, the Nafissatou Diallo exclusive–have also been double issues, meaning they should have sold significantly more than the 50,000 average.
