New magazine for kids 'The Week Junior' to debut March 20

The Week Junior, a kids news publication, will be the first weekly magazine to launch in the United States in seven years when it debuts March 20.

“The magazine has one simple goal: to help make sense of the world for young people through intelligent and exciting content expertly written to grab their attention and get them reading,” said Editor-in-Chief Andrea Barbalich, a veteran of Prevention, Child and Scholastic, and the author of “Feeling Safe: Talking to Children About War and Terrorism.”

Getting kids to read in the digital era is no easy sell. One sturdy standby inside classrooms for years was My Weekly Reader, which started in 1928 but was folded into the digital Scholastic News in 2012.

“The Week Junior is going directly to the homes,” noted Kerin O’Connor, the CEO of the US version, as well as a British version that was launched by parent company Dennis Publishing in 2016. The US version will charge $75 for a 48-week subscription aimed at readers in the third through eighth grade, ages 8 to 14.

He is hoping for about 75,000 subscribers at the end of year one, and ultimately aims to reach about 500,000 total paid circulation.

Barbalich this week hired Mindy Walker, (ex- Parents) to be her deputy editor, and Victoria Beall, (ex-Good Housekeeping and House Beautiful) as the art director.

The last weekly to launch in the US was celebrity title Closer in 2013, a title now owned by American Media. The last newsweekly to launch was the grown-up version of The Week in 2001.

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