Dev Pragad: the man who saved the news
Newsweek – for years a byword for undignified decline through its twisting, torturous series of scandals, reversals, missed opportunities, own goals and failed relaunches – is now a brand on the up again. MT meets Dev Pragad, the man who made it happen.
Dev Pragad doesn’t want to talk about the dark times before. It’s quite understandable. Like most turnaround chief executives, he wants to talk about the good times, the revival of his business and its
bright future.
There’s plenty to say about that. Pragad has spent the past five years leading a remarkable transformation at Newsweek, turning a brand that had become synonymous with scandal and the sorry decline of traditional media into a rare success story.
In 2020, Newsweek’s website hit 100 million unique monthly readers, up from seven million at the start of 2017. In 2021, its revenues doubled to $60m. Profits have been growing healthily since 2018, and the company is without debt for the first time in decades.
