This article is about the type of weekly publication. For the Australian TV series, see News Magazine (TV program). For the Australian publisher News Magazines, see News Corp Australia.
"Newsweekly" redirects here. For the Australian magazine, see News Weekly.
2512, a monthly news magazine published in Réunion
A news magazine is a typed, printed, and published magazine, radio, or television program, usually published weekly, consisting of articles about current events. News magazines generally discuss stories in greater depth than newspapers or newscasts do, and aim to give the consumer an understanding of the important events beyond the basic facts.
Broadcast news magazines
Radio news magazines are similar to television news magazines. Unlike radio newscasts, which are typically about five minutes in length, radio news magazines can run from 30 minutes to three hours or more.
Television news magazines provide a similar service to print news magazines, but their stories are presented as short television documentaries rather than written articles; in contrast to a daily newscast, news magazines allow more in-depth coverage of specific topics, including current affairs, investigative journalism (including hidden camera investigations), major interviews, and human-interest stories. The BBC's Panorama was one of the earliest examples, premiering in 1953.[1]
In the United States, the Big Three networks all currently produce at least one weekly news magazine, including ABC's 20/20, CBS's 60 Minutes, and NBC's Dateline; the current formats of 20/20 and Dateline focus predominantly on true crime stories.[2][3][4] News magazines proliferated on network schedules in the early 1990s, as they had lower production costs in comparison to scripted programs, and could attract equivalent if not larger audiences. At the same time, newer newsmagazines—as well as syndicated offerings such as A Current Affair, Hard Copy and Inside Edition—often had a larger focus on tabloid stories (including celebrities such as Michael Jackson, and the O.J. Simpson and Menendez brothers murder cases) rather than the harder journalism associated with 60 Minutes and 20/20 at the time. CNN president Ed Turner argued that these shows had eclipsed the networks' evening newscasts as their flagship programs at the expense of their news divisions' traditions of hard news.[3]
By the late-1990s, Dateline would establish a niche in true crime to set it apart from its competitors—a format that would bolster its popularity, and lead the show to being on as many as five times per-week at its peak.[3] Most of these magazines and their frequent airings would fall out of favor by the 2000s, being largely displaced by the emerging genre of reality television.[3] NBC experimented with other news magazines in the 2010s, including Rock Center with Brian Williams—a more hard news-oriented program that aired for two seasons,[5][6] and Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly—a short-lived primetime vehicle for the former Fox News correspondent.[7]
Some local television stations in the U.S. have produced news magazines, although they have largely been displaced by cheaper programming acquired from the syndication market. An exception is WCVB-TV in Boston, which has continued to produce the nightly news magazine Chronicle since 1982.[8]
In Brazil, TV Globo's news magazine Fantástico has aired on Sunday nights. Historically, it has been one of the top programs on Brazilian television, although its dominance is no longer as absolute as it was in the past due to competition from variety shows such as SBT's Programa Silvio Santos, and from Record's competing news magazine Domingo Espetacular.[9]
