I hope that this ends Jon Mecham’s reign of terror, but I doubt that it will:
“The losses at NEWSWEEK in 2007-2009 are a matter of record. Despite heroic efforts on the part of NEWSWEEK’s management and staff, we expect it to still lose money in 2010. We are exploring all options to fix that problem,” said Donald E. Graham, chairman of The Washington Post Co. “NEWSWEEK is a lively, important magazine and website, and in the current climate, it might be a better fit elsewhere.”
I honestly believe that Time and Newsweek are a blight on our civilization, primarily because they mask warmed over conventional wisdom as something more serious. I say that not because I dislike magazines but because I believe that if Washington Monthly, American Prospect, and the Economist (not my favorite, but it is the best conservative magazine that I am aware of) had the same influence that Time and Newsweek have had, we would be in a much better place politically.
joel hanes
Add Harper’s to your list of publications whose ideas deserve more influence. It’s the only print magazine to which I still subscribe, and is consistently trenchant. Also, Scott Horton blogs there.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
How about a cancer on the buttocks of knowledge? Though a blight on our civilization works, also, too.
DougJ
@joel hanes:
I don’t like Harpers that much. I realize that may be heresy, but it’s too knee-jerk left and too opining rather than reporting, for me.
Liz
Meacham spoke at a library function in our town once.
Undermined Narrative
Time and Newsweek are to serious newsmagazines what USA Today is to serious newspapers.
dmsilev
So, how long until Kaplan sells the Post?
dms
Zifnab
Time and Newsweek won’t go away. They’ll just morph into online equivalents like the Politico or NRO. People want to propagandize, and nothing is seriously going to stop them from doing it.
The beautiful thing about the internet is a) the lower cost to enter the marketplace and b) the brutal blogswarms of criticism ready to rise up and attack the common wisdom.
That is the real cure to pollution like Time and Newsweek, and now that we’ve got it, the super market news rag poison will be that much less virulent.
Gregory
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Fixed.
Brachiator
I don’t think I have purchased more than 4 issues of either magazine in the past 5 years. I have visited Newsweek’s online site maybe a couple of times. I used to subscibe to both magazines, but that was years ago.
I’m not sure that either magazine has been relevant for a long time and weekly magazines, in the age of the net, are largely a waste of time, no longer filling any necessary niche.
I’m still waiting for a reliable Internet news source which is not a Web version of traditional media. There’s a lot of criticism and opinion, but little in the way of original reporting.
MattF
I’ve read some of the columnists on-line from one or another of those magazines, but I can’t recall the last time I read anything from the printed versions of either of those magazines; in particular, the ‘news summary’ sections are completely useless.
And it doesn’t have to be that way– I’ll read an issue of The Economist, if one happens to fall into my lap, and will probably learn something from the experience.
Violet
Time and Newsweek are easy to read while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office. The Economist not so much. The fact that they don’t make their readers work very hard is their main appeal. Same with reality shows on TV.
Bread and circuses. These are the circuses. Same as it ever was.
Cathie from Canada
The day Newsweek ran a cover story about angels was the day I quit my subscription.
de stijl
General interest magazines are already nearly dead. General interest news magazines, in particular, have been dying for decades – basically since the advent of CNN and greatly accelerated since the Web.
Jon Meacham didn’t necessarily exacerbate the downfall of Newsweek. It was falling down anyway. (IMO, Newsweek is a better product than Time, although neither are great shakes. YMMV.)
Actually, I’m fairly ticked that magazines are dying. They’re the best thing to read during commercial breaks when I’m watching TV; plus, there’s the whole toilet argument.
Disclaimer: I subscribe to at least 10 magazines and pick up random, interesting-looking titles at the newstand regularly.
Zifnab
@Violet: That’s not fair. I’ve seen half a dozen YouTube videos that could break down a complex concept like CDOs or electoral college math very neatly and succinctly.
“Dumbing down” isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You shouldn’t need a PhD in a given subject matter to read that section of a periodical.
But Newsweek and Time don’t “dumb down” a subject, they dumb it up. A lot of their “journalism” has no back end research. It’s just stenography from some political source. There’s nothing wrong with a few flashy graphics and full color spreads, but you’ve got to reference solid data behind it all. Time and Newsweek don’t educate.
The reader doesn’t need to be “challenged”. This isn’t a book of word puzzles. But the reporters do need offer more than a rehash of what the front office was watching on CNN.
David
The inability, or reluctance, of these news magazines to keep up with developments in news reporting might be an indication of what their priorities are.
Euthanize Newsweek already — it’s gotten sad.
Violet
@Zifnab:
But as soon as they’re labeled a “smart magazine” they’ll lose readers. For some reason smart doesn’t sell. People like reading mindless drivel. How else do you explain the multitude of gossip mags?
TPO
But damn, Meacham is hosting the new PBS show that’s replacing Moyers’ Journal, now that Moyers has retired.
That’s good for Bill — not such a bargain for the rest of us.
Paul in KY
When they put that harridan Coulter on the cover is when I failed to renew.
Josh
I actually like Newsweek because it is easy to read. See, I don’t have a lot of time or money to spend reading the news or keeping current these days because I’m a poor student with no money who has to read a couple of books a week.
Newsweek provides enough basic information for me to know a little bit about where and what to search for so I’m not wasting my time dicking around the internet.
danimal
I really enjoy reading year-old Time and Newsweek articles when I’m stuck at the auto shop or other waiting rooms. You really get a sense of how shallow they are when the news is old and the truth has leaked out.
CaseyL
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I lost the last of my already-dwindling respect for Time. Was it Anne Coulter on the cover in 2005? Or the cover story in 2006 that predicted “The Iraq Study Group says it’s time for an exit strategy. Why Bush will listen” – with, of course, absolutely no more follow-up or mea culpa on that than on any other occasion they’ve been epically wrong.
Those are just the ones that really stick in my mind, after a decade of watching both major weeklies become little more than scandal-chasing echo chambers for conventional wisdom.
I don’t know, though, if they were ever really more than that. I don’t remember a “golden age” of Time or Newsweek: was there one? Ever?
de stijl
@Paul in KY:
The Coulter cover story was Time.
The Moar You Know
@de stijl: It’s arguably been falling down since the day it was first published; the target demographic was never the serious news junkie, but those who wanted to be spoon-fed already-established opinions.
Or in less polite terms, those who wanted to be told what to think.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@CaseyL:
Watergate.
Newsweek especially was a big factor in pushing news of the scandal out to the general public, far beyond the subscriber base of the WaPo. And the ideological divide between Newsweek and Time was wider back then – Time was the general newsweekly for the GOP and GOP leaners, and Newsweek was for Dems and Dem leaners.
They’ve been doing penance for that ever since. Say 50 Hail Ronnie’s and punch a hippy every night before going to bed, that sort of thing.
Ailuridae
@Josh:
But you have an internet connection and that cost is already sunk. So why read Newsweek when there are five to six blogs you can check a day and get a very good actual understanding of what is going on in the world?
I’ve linked to this often but explaining very complicated things in entertaining ways is not impossible. To wit, here is my nomination for all-time winner of the Internet in terms of financial and economic writing.
Stick Figures Explain the Financial Crisis
Brachiator
@Violet:
It’s not how a magazine is labeled. People and other rags satisfy a market. There are scads more people who just want to be entertained than there are people who want to be informed.
And then there are the people, mainly conservative wingnuts, who don’t distinguish between news, commentary or entertainment, and only seek to have their fears and ideology mirrored, endorsed and validated.
And now that I think about it, something labeled a “smart magazine” means “Warning. Danger. Keep Away At All Costs” to some people.
Tuffy
The Economist’s understanding of America is pathetic. Their US political reporting is the perfect storm of contrarianism, insipid shallowness and, frankly, ignorance.
Time and Newsweek are well past their point of cultural or political relevence, but in the 60’s I think they presented an idealized image of America as progressive, middle-class, and racially integrated. I do think they played a part in helping shape our conception of ourselves as a diverse and tolerant land of opportunity.
Now they may peddle fairly lame CW, but that pales in comparison to the pernicious influence of other media outlets now (ie the fucking Drudge Report).
Josh
@Ailuridae:
I don’t have a way to cart around a computer and read internet blogs the way I can carry around a small paper magazine all day.
It’s really simply convenience. I carry around a lot of books (one which is 3,200 pages and very heavy). A computer isn’t something I can carry around easily. Hell, sometimes I have to quickly use the school’s computers to check my mail (you always get looks of disgust when you don’t use them for official business, and my days have enough assholes in them without worrying about that).
Paris
The table of contents of the American Prospect alone puts me to sleep. I can’t imagine how tedious the articles are, and I subscribed for a year. It was pure Clintonian Democratic party muzak last time I checked.
Vesta
Finally the death knell sounds for the worst rag that is good for only one thing…toilet paper…but then.. wiping @$$ is too good for Newsweek/Times. So glad I cancelled my subscripition years ago…but then..still embarrassed I even had one…
WereBear
Once upon a time, when dinosaurs with saddles roamed the earth, “news” was 20some minutes on one of three networks. If you wanted more than that, a newsweekly was there for you to sprinkle somebody’s facts into your cocktail conversation.
Not only have things changed, the newsweeklies themselves have become corporate shills with whole chunks of what looks like articles with little bits of italics running along the side that are a person’s only clue that it is, in fact, an ad.
I know both magazines and television are based, and always have been, on selling advertising. But when the ratio has gone from 1/20th to damn near half, I don’t see why I should bother.
Comrade Luke
You do know that Meacham now has a TV show, right? It’s the one that’s replacing Bill Moyers.
I’m not even remotely kidding.
I’m sure blockquote is going to fail there, but you get the point: he’s shocked, SHOCKED, to be called right-of-center.
slackjawedgawker
While I think your characterization of the magazines holds true for Time, I think it’s too kind a description for Newsweek. Newsweek has really changed the last few years. It’s become the first place I look when I’m curious how the rightwing plans to spin an issue for the mainstream masses. Perhaps it used to reflect “warmed over conventional wisdom”, but in Meacham’s tenure the magazine seems more interested in depicting rightwing absurdity as though it is nothing more than the typical CW. It’s the most dangerous publication out there now, and I hope it dies soon.
licensed to kill time
I remember as a kid (back in the 60’s) hearing an adult I respected say Time magazine wrote good stuff like “It’s as if someone invented 5-up and 6-up and then gave up”.
Somewhere around the late 90’s or early 00’s I started noticing that Time and Newsweek were dumbing down their writing. It seemed they were writing at about a fourth grade level. I haven’t read either one in years. I think the concept of a weekly news magazine is now just irrelevant.
Paul in KY
@de stijl: Thank’s for correction. I thought it was Newsweek. I know there was something they did that sent me off, but I can’t put my finger on it right now.
burnspbesq
@Brachiator:
“There’s a lot of criticism and opinion, but little in the way of original reporting.”
Original reporting takes time and costs money. There is a lack of viable business models for online journalism.
burnspbesq
@licensed to kill time:
“Time and Newsweek were dumbing down their writing”
Not limited to those two. I have been a Sports Illustrated subscriber since 1968, and I am not renewing. It’s no longer worth it.
Silver
@Tuffy:
That’s true, but the Economist is about 90% other stuff. And no Lindsey Lohan news.
(When reading the Economist, do keep in mind that Megan McArdle used to work for them. For more than a day. That’s a huge black mark on their record.)
Silver
@burnspbesq:
HBO is worth getting just for Real Sports.
de stijl
@Paul in KY:
General dumbassery is a perfectly reasonable cause to unsubscribe.
WereBear
Original online sources are accumulating, it’s just not critical mass yet. How many traditional sources use stuff from The Smoking Gun, for instance?
They do well-written, original reporting. Their articles on the James Frey mess was the best I ever, ever read on that subject, and they broke it, to boot.
Ailuridae
@Comrade Luke:
He’s on Morning Joe on a weekly basis and is no less of a hyper-partisan, ignore inconvenient facts type conservative than Scarborough is. Like Joe he has the pateen of reasonableness but he’s a Republican and a clearly partisan one.
EconWatcher
The Economist is the best news magazine for the sheer breadth of its global coverage. If you read it cover to cover every week (who has the time?) you’d have some significant background on virtually ever country on the planet. And its “Special Reports” are often very informative and interesting. The editorial stance is sort of “libertarian lite.” You may not like that line, but they’re up-front about it.
My big beef is that the magazine relentlessly and uncritically cheered “financial innovation.” They were among the biggest boosters of the notion that the spread of derivatives and structured finance reduced systemic risk.
They no longer claim this, but they’ve never really done a mea culpa. I really think they’d enhance their credibility if they’d do a lengthy article admitting and explaining where they went wrong.
de stijl
U.S. News & World Report was the print precursor to Fox News. Not quite as ready to go all the way “GOP! GOP! GOP!” but all of the underpinnings were there.
Look at Michael Barone’s career path.
Turbulence
@Silver: (When reading the Economist, do keep in mind that Megan McArdle used to work for them. For more than a day. That’s a huge black mark on their record.)
Very very true. On the other hand, the Economist also has Ryan Avent writing stuff. He’s the anti-McArdle. He actually knows stuff and seems honest. His writings at the nexus of environmentalism, economics and urban planning have been really helpful to me. And unlike a lot of the Economist’s staffers, he actually understands a thing or two about how American politics works. And hey, the Atlantic employs both McArdle and James Fallows and Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Then again, I usually just read him at his personal blog rather than at the Economist….
toujoursdan
My roommate gets the Economist and I read it occasionally. They have had some over-the-top boneheaded articles.
One recent article on U.S. immigration correctly labelled capitalism a ponzi scheme, but then went on to cheer about how this was a good thing. Somehow I kept my lunch down until I reached the end when they confidently predicted America would have a population of 1 billion by 2100 (Hooray!)
I just shook my head and had to wonder how anyone could cheerlead like that with a straight face. Even if he believed that the invisible hand of technology will fix everything, it’s hard to believe that anyone wouldn’t see an America with 1 billion people being a rather unpleasant place to live.
blondie
Ann McDaniel is the Post’s angel of death – I worked for a pub once owned by the Post, and she became our managing director for a while. Turned out it was to facilitate the sale of the publication (something that the senior editorial staff didn’t learn until the morning she called them in and gave them their notice, minutes before the all-hands meeting).
Brachiator
@CaseyL:
Depends on your frame of reference. Both magazines were reliably “mainstream” once upon a time.
By the way, there is a good, new biography out on Henry Luce, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century, by Alan Brinkley. Luce published the first issue of Time when he was 24 years old.
@ burnspbesq
Problem is, the business model for offline journalism ain’t doing so hot, either.
DanF
When was the last time anyone in leftblogostan felt the need to link to a Newsweek article due to a compelling, investigative piece? Sometimes Joe Klein might get a snarky blog link, but really … not much quality product is being produced over there. Maybe if they cut back even further on reporters…
mclaren
@DougJ:
Essentially all our media “mask warmed over conventional wisdom as something more serious.” Ever seen Charlie Rose? That guy has his tongue so far up the ass of groupthink conventional wisdom he needs to brush his teeth with toilet paper. I still have dozens of hours of Charlie Rose on VHS tape nodding sagely as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz rhapdsodically explain how the forthcoming 2003 Iraq invasion will pay for itself with all the oil that will flow, and how the Iraqis will greet our troops with candy and flowers.
Washington Post? New York Times? These papers french kiss the bunghole of the establishment daily, serving as stenographers for whatever bullshit the White House wants to spew that day. During the Reagan administration those papers delightedly explained the crucial importance of that profound economic discovery The Laffer Curve, while during the Clinton administration those papers gravely lectured us on the necessity of impeaching the president because he lied about a blowjob.
And what about Balloon Juice? Every time some mugger with a badge decides to set up some new “show me your papers, mein herr!” gestapo tactic, whether it’s biometric ID or kidnapping American citizens without charges and without a warrant, why, the Balloon Juicers just loves them some police state.
Time for some harsh reality, Doug: anyone in America who publicly dissents from the “conventional wisdom” gets screamed into oblivion, marginalized, howled at with crazed obscenities, called “insane” and “off his meds” and “a psycho” and “in need of therapy” and “a loon” and “a wack job.”
Toqcueville remarked on this more than 150 years ago:
Tocqueveille, Alexis, Democracy In America, Chapter 15, “POWER EXERCISED BY THE MAJORITY IN AMERICA UPON OPINION.”
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Everyone should read the Far East Economic Review. It’s the thinking man’s Economist without the conservative tripe that makes its way into so much of the writing.
twiffer
if newsweek folds, what the hell will cover the tables in waiting rooms across the nation?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
wikipedia claims that the last issue of FEER was published in Dec 2009. Is that wrong?
slackjawedgawker
@mclaren:
Say what???
DZ-015
@mclaren: Pow! Threadkiller!
Turbulence
@slackjawedgawker:
A few days ago, there was a thread about the new biometric electronic social security card that Dems were proposing. mclaren flipped out because a few commenters at BJ didn’t buy into his paranoid delusions about how having a new authentication method for proving work eligibility meant the end of the world.
asiangrrlMN
@slackjawedgawker: Plus, he thinks that if you don’t agree all authority is bad, you’re a fascist pig sympathizer. Try to ignore him when he gets on this subject.
My bank has Newsweek in the lobby. I read through three of them in the twenty minutes I waited for my banker. All utterly facile and superficial shit slanted towards the conservative view. Give me People (my dentist office) or SI (my doctor’s office) which don’t purport to say anything of import.
Will
I don’t know. The American Conservative has Larison…
JDG
My family went back and forth between Newsweek and Time while I was growing up (I’m in my mid-30’s now); I had the impression back then that Newsweek was the very-slightly-more-liberal rag, but that’s like calling $0.99 store-brand white bread slightly-more-flavorful than Wonder bread…
Anyway, I hadn’t really looked at Newsweek in several years until I started dating a woman right around the time of the Greatest Most Excellent Military Conquest Ever (Iraq) – she had a subscription (thank jeebus she didn’t pay for it). Reading it then (on the toilet, no less!), I realized how much they suck – lazy assholes didn’t even fucking bother to re-phrase the propaganda they were being fed about the war. I was beyond disgusted, but since I was already jaded and cynical (several of my college professors called me cynical years before that), I wasn’t that surprised. However, my reed-thin respect for Newsweek (and WaPoCo and it’s other shit-rags) vanished then, and it ain’t ever comin back…
Of course, I’m preaching to the choir here…
Hypnos
I wouldn’t call the Economist “conservative”. It supports drug legalization and gay marriage, and is generally progressive on social issues. It supports free markets, but does not deny the necessary role of government regulation, and of the welfare state for wealth redistribution. It is one of the few pro-free market papers that never waivered in its support of Antropogenic Global Warming science, and called out Climategate for the bullshit it was. Real Climate complimented it on that (even praising it above the Guardian!).
I’ll agree that from time to time it puts out bullshit articles or something or other, but overall I think the coverage is good and they aren’t too much in your face with ideology. And I wouldn’t know about finance, but on the Iraq War they did put out a retraction/admission of wrongdoing for their initial support.
Silver
@Hypnos:
I think the original comment was on their US political coverage, which reads like it was written by a refugee from NRO, albeit one that can write a semi-coherent sentence.
IIRC, the Economist had a story a little bit back about how Obama is much too divisive as a President…you know, the kind of conservative bullshit that is utterly transparent.
priscianus jr
And yet, they have their moments:
http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/05/04/why-jamie-dimon-is-afraid-of-elizabeth-warren/?xid=huffpo-direct
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@mclaren:
Mclaren MCLAREN MCLAREN!
Brachiator
@Silver:
Their coverage of California economic and social issues has often been good. It’s sad when a foreign publication has better coverage than the local newspapers. Local TV coverage here is a waste of time.
By the way, the most recent issue of The Economist endorses Cameron over Brown or Clegg.
Oh, and another funny thing. The Economist can get their own backyard wrong. I was looking at a January issue, where Brown was deciding on when to call for an election. That issue of the magazine assumed that the only two candidates that mattered were Cameron and Brown. The possibility of a hung Parliament never occurred to them.