Audience Overview
Who is the Newsweek audience?
One page, three layers: the answer first, the evidence beneath it, and the exploration inside every visual. Every figure carries its source, its period and its limits.
The thesis · Executive · Jun 2026
Comscore site unique visitors fell from 47.4M in March 2025 to 13.0M in June 2026, while minutes per visitor held near 3.8.
What we read into it
The measured audience is a fraction of what it was, and the people who remain read about as much as they ever did. The first question is whether any part of the fall is a measurement change; the second is acquisition.
Recommended next step · Confirm the June 2026 reading against a verified Comscore release before any recovery target is set.
- 01
Site unique visitors 47.4M (Mar 2025) to 13.0M (Jun 2026).
- 02
News & Information rank moved from 10 to 20 over the same period.
- 03
Minutes per visitor ended at 3.81, within its long-run range.
- Comscore
- Mar 2025 – Jun 2026
- Confidence
- high
Each source reports on its own period. Figures are shown side by side and never combined.
Your lens · Conclusions, trends and the two or three questions that matter this quarter.
Audience Signature
What makes this audience different from everyone else's?
Against us adults 18+, 55-64 yrs old is the audience's most distinctive attribute at an index of 162. Seniority, post-graduate education and political interest form the spine of the profile; under-25s and local news are the structural gaps.
Compared with
Adults 18+ · index 100
Ordered by
Attribute group
Index 100 is the benchmark supplied in the export. No competitor benchmark was included in the pilot pack, so competitive comparison is unavailable.
- Definition
- Index = Newsweek composition on an attribute ÷ benchmark composition × 100. An index of 140 means the attribute is 1.4× as common in the Newsweek audience as in the benchmark.
- Base
- Comscore Plan Metrix, US Adults 18+, desktop and mobile. 15-month average, Mar 2025 to May 2026.
- Limitation
- Comscore composition is a modelled panel estimate. Differences inside ±5 index points are not meaningful, and index says nothing about absolute size — always read the dot size with the position.
Show the underlying values
| Attribute | Newsweek % | Adults 18+ % | Index | Audience |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55-64 yrs old | 27.4% | 16.9% | 162 | 9.7M |
| Baby Boomers (1946 - 1964) | 35.2% | 22.4% | 157 | 12.6M |
| 18-24 yrs old | 6.1% | 13.6% | 45 | 2.4M |
| 65+ yrs old | 25.6% | 16.6% | 154 | 9M |
| Gen Z (1997 - 2012) | 10.1% | 20.8% | 49 | 3.7M |
| 25-34 yrs old | 10% | 18.8% | 53 | 3.7M |
| Other | 1.4% | 2.5% | 56 | 0.5M |
| Retired | 29.1% | 21% | 139 | 10.4M |
| Black/African American | 7% | 11.1% | 63 | 2.5M |
| Sustainability Professional | 1% | 1.6% | 63 | 0.4M |
| Student | 10.9% | 16.8% | 65 | 4M |
| All (Healthy Living) | 95.6% | 71.4% | 134 | 34.3M |
| Human Resources/Payroll | 0.8% | 0.6% | 133 | 0.3M |
| Millennials/Gen Y (1981 - 1996) | 20.5% | 29.5% | 69 | 7.5M |
| All (Travel) | 96% | 74.2% | 129 | 34.4M |
| Yes | 8.9% | 12.1% | 74 | 3.2M |
Scale versus Relationship
Where does scale turn into a relationship, and where does it not?
News sits far right: 165.5M section visitors, more than any other, at 1.12 engaged minutes each. Family & Parenting sits in the opposite corner — a fraction of the reach, the strongest engaged minutes per visitor. The quadrant a section occupies should decide what it is measured on.
Relationship measured by
Sections shown
Bubble size
Reading the quadrants
Reach without depth
Many visitors, little time each. Measure on reach and syndication value, not loyalty.
Loyal niche
Fewer visitors, deeper reading and higher return. Measure on repeat visits, not volume.
Scale and relationship
Both at once. The rarest position — protect the format that produced it.
Ranked by minutes / visitor
Select any section — on the plot or in the list — to open its full behaviour profile.
- Definition
- Visitors and views are Parse.ly section aggregates for the period. Engaged minutes per visitor is total engaged minutes divided by section visitors. Returning share is returning visitors divided by section visitors.
- Base
- newsweek.com sections, 31 Jul 2025 to 31 Jul 2026
- Limitation
- Section-level, not article-level. A visitor can appear in several sections, so sections never sum to a site total, and Parse.ly figures are never compared with Comscore. 108 low-volume or non-editorial sections are held back from this view.
Show the underlying values
| Section | Visitors | Minutes / visitor | Views | Posts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| News | 165.5M | 1.12 | 357.1M | 113,523 |
| U.S. | 67.2M | 0.98 | 122.3M | 96,419 |
| Politics | 54.2M | 1.07 | 109.0M | 22,593 |
| World | 20.3M | 1.01 | 36.1M | 55,408 |
| Life | 17.3M | 1.14 | 33.7M | 4,729 |
| Family & Parenting | 13.6M | 1.61 | 34.0M | 5,128 |
| Pets | 10.8M | 1.18 | 25.6M | 3,889 |
| Entertainment | 10.4M | 0.78 | 13.9M | 13,584 |
| Sports | 9.7M | 1.09 | 17.4M | 17,215 |
| Travel | 5.4M | 0.77 | 7.3M | 1,827 |
| Health | 4.8M | 0.89 | 6.4M | 5,544 |
| Personal Finance | 3.6M | 0.68 | 4.3M | 527 |
| Business | 3.2M | 0.59 | 4.0M | 3,765 |
| Culture | 2.9M | 0.82 | 4.3M | 41,634 |
| Education | 1.2M | 0.71 | 1.6M | 686 |
| Tech & Science | 0.7M | 0.55 | 0.9M | 14,857 |
| Technology | 0.0M | 0.66 | 0.0M | 26 |
Competitive Audience Explorer
How does Newsweek compare with the brands it competes against?
On unique audience, Newsweek reaches 47% of USA Today — a gap of 47.8M. Newsweek ranks 2 of 6 on this measure in the comparison set, and 46% of USA Today's audience also visits Newsweek. Competitive figures are illustrative until a multi-brand Comscore export is loaded — the Newsweek pilot pack covers Newsweek only.
Compared on
Head to head with
Newsweek versus USA Today
- Unique audience
- 41.6M89.4M
- Reach
- 14.2%30.5%
- Minutes / visitor
- 4.86.1
On unique audience, Newsweek reaches 47% of USA Today — a gap of 47.8M.
- Definition
- One measure at a time, one named benchmark at a time. Duplication is the share of the competitor's audience that also visits Newsweek in the same month.
- Base
- United States, adults 18+, desktop and mobile.
- Limitation
- Competitor values are illustrative and must not be quoted externally. Comscore brand definitions differ in scope, so like-for-like comparison requires the same entity level for every brand.
Show the underlying values
| Brand | Unique audience | Reach | Minutes / visitor | Duplication with Newsweek |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA Today | 89.4M | 30.5% | 6.1 | 46% |
| Newsweek | 41.6M | 14.2% | 4.8 | — |
| The Hill | 33.2M | 11.3% | 5.4 | 38% |
| Time | 27.8M | 9.5% | 4.2 | 34% |
| The Atlantic | 24.1M | 8.2% | 9.7 | 21% |
| Axios | 19.6M | 6.7% | 5.9 | 18% |
Reader Voice Explorer
What are readers telling us, in their own words?
The founding cohort is 3 interviews and 17 coded excerpts. The most frequently coded theme is “Product opportunity”, in 3 excerpts across 3 of 3 interviews. At this size these are hypotheses to test, not findings.
Group excerpts by
Bar length is the number of coded excerpts, colour is the coded tone, and the second figure is how many of the 3 interviews it came from.
Coded theme
Product opportunity
3 coded excerpts · 3 of 3 interviews · coded tone mixed
Select an excerpt for its full context, or open Reader Voice in full.
Evidence base · 3 interviews · 17 coded excerpts · 17 direct quotations · 17 awaiting research-owner approval
- Definition
- Each bar counts coded excerpts carrying that code, with the number of distinct interviews they came from. Counts are of excerpts and interviews, never of readers.
- Base
- 3 interviews, 17 coded excerpts
- Limitation
- Three interviews cannot establish how common a view is. Nothing here is projectable to the audience and no figure may be used as a percentage.
Show the underlying values
| Coded theme | Excerpts | Interviews | Tone |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product opportunity | 3 | 3 | Mixed |
| Brand perception | 2 | 2 | Positive |
| Reader need | 2 | 2 | Positive |
| Brand value | 2 | 2 | Positive |
| Trust and credibility | 2 | 1 | Positive |
| Industry tension | 1 | 1 | Critical |
| Content preference | 1 | 1 | Positive |
| Content value | 1 | 1 | Positive |
| Subscription motivation | 1 | 1 | Positive |
| Customer experience | 1 | 1 | Critical |
| Reader motivation | 1 | 1 | Positive |
What to do about it
The three things that should change your week
Ordered for executive. Findings, interpretations and recommendations are labelled separately and never blended into a single confident sentence.
Show
What this means for executive
Measured reach is the live question; composition and on-site behaviour have been comparatively stable.
- 01
Confirm the June 2026 Comscore reading against a verified Key Measures release before any target is set.
- 02
Treat the reach decline as an acquisition question, separately from the on-site experience.
- 03
Fund a larger reader cohort so motive evidence can carry weight alongside the panel data.