Mark Coatney has joined at least one Newsweek.com staffer in presenting a very cogent case for saving Newsweek.com on Tumblr.

But if you take a few step backs the decision is, if anything, even more depressing.

For one thing, it demonstrates a clear failure to understand the web. Tina Brown is a creature of print, not of the web; Ryan Tate, for one, has chronicled her difficulties making the transition from the former to the latter. In the world of print, as Coatney says, it&8217;s conceivable that you can take one magazine&8217;s readership and transfer it to anotherthink the way that Life&8217;s readers were steered to Time, or Gourmet&8217;s to Bon Appetit. But you can&8217;t do that online, for reasons which Coatney outlines well and which the new bosses at Newsweek don&8217;t seem to grok at all.

More generally, there&8217;s a clear and obvious move among online media companies towards creating coherent sites for clearly-defined audiences, rather than attempting a one-size-fits-all mush. AOL has lots of sites at lots of different domains, as does Gawker Media and even the New York Times and Washington Post companies. The Newsweek Daily Beast Company is coming into existence owning two valuable and major websites with clearly distinct audiences. There&8217;s almost certainly a strong case not to try to build a third, while Newsweek is still in turnaround mode. But equally it&8217;s idiotic to try to cut those two sites down to just one.

Tags: newsweek

 
 

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Obama Now Willing To Throw Out Principles In Defense Of Libyan Rebels We Know Nothing About THE WIRE 50: The Most Influential People In Media This Year How The Atlantic Used The Web To Hit Profits.

See Also: HUGE Crowds Gather Outside White House To Sing National Anthem After Hearing Of Osama Bin Laden's Death (VIDEO)Now Check Out Obama's Reaction To Seth Meyer's Osama Bin Laden Joke At Saturday's Correspondents' DinnerWhite House Sent A 3-Word Email Notifying Networks There Was Huge News Coming When Andrew Sullivan left The Atlantic to join Tina Brown's NewsBeast much was made of how his departure would be a huge loss for the Atlantic and a huge boon for Brown.  And for good reason.

Looks like at least half of that assumption was very wrong.

Bob Cohn, editorial director of Atlantic Digital tells Jeff Bercovici that April, the site's first month without Sullivan, was their second best month ever : “According to internal data, it drew 5.1 million uniques, more than 25 percent above its 2010 average of 3.9 million.”

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