U.S. News stopped printing its magazine but kept printing its rankings
For decades U.S. News & World Report trailed Time and Newsweek as America's third news weekly. Then its college rankings, launched in 1983, grew more influential than its journalism. By 2010 the regular magazine was gone from print, yet the college, hospital and finance guides kept rolling off the presses.
The company grew out of two publications founded by journalist David Lawrence: United States News, started in 1933 after an earlier daily folded, and World Report, a 1946 magazine covering international affairs. In 1948 he merged them and then sold the combined title to its employees. It leaned slightly more conservative than its rivals, favoured economics, health and education, and skipped sports, entertainment and celebrity entirely. Circulation topped one million in 1958 and doubled by 1973.
Its first rankings were not of schools but of people. From 1974 to 1986 an annual 'Who Runs America?' survey put the ten most powerful Americans on the cover. The president always came first, while the runner-up ranged from Henry Kissinger to Federal Reserve chairmen and Senator Edward Kennedy, with the occasional TV anchor such as Walter Cronkite slipping into the list.
The college guides changed the company's identity. Real estate developer Mortimer Zuckerman, previously owner of the New York Daily News, bought it in October 1984. Hospital rankings followed in 1990, covering difficult cases across 16 specialties, and cars from 2007. Falling ad revenue forced the magazine to go biweekly in 2009, then monthly five months later, and a November 2010 memo told staff the December issue would be the last monthly print edition sent to subscribers.
The list model, adopted in 2009, moved easily online and helped the company return to profit by the early 2010s. It licenses its name so ranked institutions can quote results in advertising. Newer ventures include global university rankings from 2014 and a ranking of all 50 states from 2017, in which Louisiana repeatedly came last.
Source: U.S. News & World Report
