We posed this interesting question to a veteran Las Vegas journalist, who's worked for the Weekly and now works for Vegas Seven, which launched earlier this year. Here's what he had to say on the matter:
"Seven is typically double the size of the competition, and our "Best of the City" issue that's out right now is a whopping 164 pages. This success has to do with our innovative formula -- we're a magazine-newspaper hybrid with a wide range of content, from style to politics to sports betting. We have an experienced Vegas-savvy staff and it's all led by Wendoh Media, which has strong positive community connections in key areas. It's pretty amazing that this ambitious, if not daring, launch could be this successful at this time."
Indeed. Another local writer we know added the point that Justin Weniger and Ryan Doherty, who own WENDOH Media (which is also behind 944 Magazine, Daily Fiasco, Spy on Vegas, and more) have been in town for over a decade and have backgrounds in the club and nightlife scene, relationships that have helped them take club, restaurant, and other nightlife advertising away from the Weekly, which is one of the reasons the Weekly went from around 80 pages a week to 68 or 72 seemingly overnight.
This is true -- we happen to keep back issues of all the local magazines for reference purposes and just did a quick page count. This week's issue has a total of 72 pages, including ads, while as recently as last December it was 88 pages, and last June it had 96 pages.
While the Weekly continues to be a great source of information for us about the local entertainment scene, and more, we're impressed with Seven's quality, both in terms of writing and production values, and are happy to see it thriving. It's home to food critic Max Jacobson, one of the three authors of our upcoming Eating Las Vegas guide, which profiles the Top 50 eateries in town, from hamburgers to haute cuisine, and recently profiled our own Anthony Curtis.
One sheet attached with the specifics of our distribution, updated in July. We distribute 62,000 copies weekly.
Both magazines come out every Thursday (Seven starts hitting the stands late Wednesday night) and are also available to read online as digital versions if you're not in town; we couldn't find any map on the Weekly's site for where to pick up a copy, but most neighborhood bars, gas stations, and a lot of restaurants carry it; click this link to find out where to pick up copies of Vegas Seven. They're currently distributing 62,000 copies a week and get an average of 33,000 hits per week on the digital version.
