The highly respected Financial Times published a business profile of Newsmax Media, touting the company as a business whose Web site, Newsmax.com, has become “one of the strongest conservative voices online.”
The article from the Times’ Monday print and online editions, headlined “Rise of Newsmax Defies Media Trend,” notes that, while U.S. media brands ranging from CNN to The New York Times have suffered through a difficult period, Newsmax’s business is booming in terms of revenue and traffic.
The company will report revenues of at least $35 million, up from $25 million the previous year, Financial Times noted.
Newsmax founder Christopher Ruddy told the Times he started the company in 1998 with a $25,000 investment to give Americans “an alternative to the mainstream news, the liberal media in New York and Washington.
“We’re a heartland publication,” he added, attributing its success to the tendency of what he calls the “liberal media bubble” to ignore middle America.
The Financial Times, a business daily published in Britain, noted that, when Fox News’s Sean Hannity asked vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin what she read regularly, she immediately replied: “I read Newsmax and The Frontiersman and The Wall Street Journal and everything online.”
The Times observed that her choice of Newsmax “before her local paper or the U.S. financial daily was no accident, not least because the magazine put her on its cover a few days before John McCain chose the relative unknown as his running mate.”
Newsmax is not the only conservative-leaning media brand bucking the declines seen in much of the news industry, The Times stated, citing the success of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and online commentators such as Andrew Breitbart who oppose President Obama’s policies.
“The rule of thumb is we should do very well when there’s a Democrat in the White House, but I had 40 per cent growth rates every year in the history of Newsmax before Barack Obama came in,” Ruddy told the Times, adding that Newsmax sees itself as “the loyal opposition.”
The paper continued: “. . . Newsmax is emerging as one of the strongest conservative voices online, where it says it has beaten the Drudge Report’s audience numbers for two years.”
Newsmax estimates it reaches 6 million Americans through its various media platforms and uses its Web site, which is free, to promote both its monthly magazine and a growing number of paid-for print and online newsletters covering health and personal finance, the Financial Times pointed out. One title alone, The Blaylock Wellness Report, now has 80,000 subscribers, while the monthly magazine, Newsmax, has 250,000 paid subscribers, equating to a print readership of nearly 800,000.
A $500,000-a-year investment in Newsmax.TV, an online video site covering politics, health and money, is paying off in terms of subscriptions to the magazine and newsletters.
As for advertising, it has held up well through the financial crisis, Ruddy said, because “we have a demographic that’s 50-plus. They’re the only demographic with money.”
© 2013 Newsmax. All rights reserved.