The Times (via Tom Tomorrow) find Jon Meacham trying to make Newsweek cool again:
Editorially, Newsweek’s plan calls for moving in the direction it was already headed — toward not just analysis and commentary, but an opinionated, prescriptive or offbeat take on events.
The current cover article argues that America’s involvement in Afghanistan parallels the Vietnam War, and a companion piece offers a plan for handling that country. Newsweek also plans to lean even more heavily on the appeal of big-name writers like Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria and George Will.
Starting in May, articles will be reorganized under four broad, new sections — one each for short takes, columnists and commentary, long reporting pieces like the cover articles, and culture — each with less compulsion to touch on the week’s biggest events. A new graphic feature on the last page, “The Bluffer’s Guide,” will tell readers how to sound as if they are knowledgeable on a current topic, whether they are or not.
Remember what happened last time Meacham tried to get the kids to read Newsweek:
After about an hour, there seemed to be no more questions for him, so Newsweek editor Jon Meacham turned to his audience—about 100 graduate students at Columbia journalism school—and said he had a question for them: Did anyone in the room read Newsweek or Time? There was a small, awkward rumbling before finally, a man shouted, “No!”
Mr. Meacham scanned the audience for his quarry and then asked the journalism student, clad in a black turtleneck, whether he read The Economist. Yes, he did.
“It’s the most talked about and least read magazine,” said Mr. Meacham. “Have you looked at Newsweek?”
“Sure,” said the J-schooler.
“And it’s not up to your standards?”
“I find less useful honestly. The news? I don’t get it from Newsweek. The Economist is more courageous,” he answered.
“The success of The Economist—the fact that you read it, a black-turtlenecked guy at Columbia,” Mr. Meacham began.
The whole thing reminds me of the Pat Boone heavy metal album. Meacham is a sociopathic dweeb and we’ll all be better off when his crappy magazine goes bankrupt. Sorry, but there’s no excuse for this kind of facile stupidity:
Sully
Hero Hudson pilot cool as a cuke on “Cactus” tape. Clint Eastwood in biopic?
Just Some Fuckhead
Agree.
Ned R.
Sorry, I’m just singing Digable Planets now…
Punchy
Uh……what? What the fuck is a "cuke"? What the fuck does Cactus mean?
Mary
I wouldn’t actually give the paper a tiger shape by lending sociopathy to the general dweebiness, but it is pretty entertaining that he’s going to use George WIll to revitalize the mag – and kind of explains where they got the idea for The Bluffer’s Guide feature.
Maybe they ought to just play to their strength and rename the mag for the feature.
El Cid
Yeah, man, all the happenin’ cool kids are hep to read Christopher Hitchens and George Will, daddio.
smiley
@Mary: George Will has been with Newsweek for years — or at least he used to be. Maybe he left and their bringing him back.
I can hardly wait to see which direction the arrow is for Judd Gregg.
Shinobi
Hey now, I had a subscription to Newsweek for several years, and I really enjoyed reading it. I decided to cancel it though, because I was 15 and it was time to save up for a car.
Reverend Dennis
George Will? He’s soooooooo hip. In a matter of weeks all the kids will want to wear bowties
Cat Lady
I would pay to see the part where they all high fived about how clever and forward looking they are. "Hey, people voted for change, so let’s get GEORGE WILL!" Now, William Shatner, that would be cool.
Dustin
Hitchens may get a point in my book because he’s an uncompromising atheist but he’s still an overbearing asshole; why people take the guy seriously or think he’ll help their circulation is beyond me.
DJShay
Hitchens, Will and Zakaria. Just what the world needs. Another opinionated conservative rag.
cosanostradamus
.
Magazines? They still print MAGAZINES???!!!
Oh, yeah, for doctors’ offices.
And I suppose they MAIL them!!!???
I just look at the pictures. Here’s some:
Friday Beach Blogging from the North Shore of Oahu.
.
Linkmeister
In the current issue Meacham still avers that America is a "center-right" country.
As I read somewhere else, if you’ve got WaPo stock, sell short.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
Didn’t one of the cable news networks announce a plan some years ago to lure younger viewers by using hip-hop jargon in their newscasts? IIRC the only effect that announcement had was a ton of fun-making on blogs; I don’t think it even made it as far as a test broadcast.
Aha, here we go. I remember thinking at the time that what the news needed was not up-to-date idioms but less idiocy and right-wing propaganda.
beltane
George Will? Without Cokie Roberts? Why not add Tom Freidman and make it a threesome of lameness. Newsweek is perfect waiting room material, kind of like a prelude to your root canal.
Steve Balboni
In case anyone was wondering, Meachem’s new book on Andrew Jackson is pure dreck. Save your money.
linda
‘sociopathic dweeb’ — perfect.
god, i cannot stand meacham’s unctuous moralizing.
jake 4 that 1
Place your bets: Tits on page 2 by 2010.
Rome Again
@Reverend Dennis:
We can have a whole new generation of Tucker Carlsons.
AhabTRuler
Both Time and Newsweek are crap. I felt kinda funny when I was a young teenager and I stopped reading my parents’ magazines ’cause they were uselessly uninformative. Of course, I was the one with the Playboy subscription (for the articles!), FSM bless Publishers Clearing House’s little heart.
I mean, I also had a sub to Rolling Stone, but that was usefully uninformative.
Nicole
Um, yeah. Because Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria and George Will are really going to capture the youngsters of the Obama generation.
I’m not sure whose more out of touch…. Meacham or punk GOP reps who play with toy mice.
jibeaux
@Punchy:
I think cucumber.
Not that this is to NW’s credit, quite the contrary, but holy crap he was cool on that tape. It was basically:
You want this runway over here?
No, we may be going into the Hudson.
How bout this other runway, you prefer that one?
No, we’re going in the Hudson.
In exactly the tone of voice that you would use if "Hudson" were a runway.
amorphous
Meh. I enjoy listening to Zakaria’s perspective. At least he’ll recognize regions that are don’t rhyme with schmiddelleest or mamerica.
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist: Reason enough to link this again.
Faux News
So "Newsweek" is going to be the new "Tiger Beat"?
Bring it on I say, right to the rubbish bin.
Stuck
Maybe. I’m not a Meaham fan, but he has had his moments. like this one.
That was a three pointer.
aimai
I love the idea that they are going to dumb it down further,f or people who don’t have time even to try to be knowledgable about important topics. What on earth were they doing all those other years with the up and down arrows but enabling people who couldn’t be bothered to know anything about current events to possess water cooler level knowledge appropriate to really stupid workplaces?
aimai
fliegr
@Punchy: Cucumber. And cactus is the radio callsign of US Air, held over from when they were acquired by America West (HQ in Phoenix) who went by cactus. And yes, Newsweek is information for brain stems only.
Brick Oven Bill
Punchy asks: What the fuck is a "cuke"?
A ‘cuke’ refers to a cucumber, which, as I am a grower of cucumbers in my victory garden, are cool to the touch on a hot summer day. Home-made pickles are really, really good. The phrase ‘cool as a cucumber’ is cool, but the use of the word ‘cuke’ is stupid.
The phrase ‘cool as a cucumber’ comes to us from a man named John Gay, who wrote in his poem “A New Song for New Similes”:
Pert as a pear-monger I’d be,
If Molly were but kind;
Cool as a cucumber could see
The rest of womankind.
Like a stuck pig I gaping stare,
And eye her o’er and o’er;
Lean as a rake, with sighs and care,
Sleek as a mouse before.
Glad to be of service.
Mike in NC
Bill Kristol and Jonah Goldberg, call your agents before it’s too late!
DougJ
@Stuck
Sticking it to Palin wasn’t exactly a profile in courage. Chris Buckley and Kathleen Parker get props from me for doing so, but members of the mainstream media don’t. It’s their fucking job.
Stuck
@linda:
yes, this gives me the heebee geebees also. He acts sometimes like a one man "This Week in God" meets "Mr. Americana"
Walker
Newsweek is kept in business by doctors offices and airport newstands. That is their market.
amorphous
i haz a b&?
guess not.
Stuck
@DougJ:
Sticking it to Palin wasn’t exactly a profile in courage.
I know, I know, I said I wasn’t a Meacham Fan, but that line was pretty good, imo.
DougJ
The ref to Cincinnatus is a bit wignutty though. They love that guy.
Warren Terra
Meacham’s indignation and shock that educated people (well, Journalism students) don’t read Newsweek is really funny.
That said, Meacham’s diagnosis isn’t wrong: in an era of cable news saturation and especially blogs the market for a weekly magazine telling you the basic facts of what happened two weeks ago is small and not getting any larger. There nonetheless remains a place (though one of questionable profitabiliy) for magazines like The Economist, The New Yorker, and Harpers, to deliver more eclectic and better-written reported stories – I just got my Harpers yesterday and the long report from the Frankfurt Book Fair is a total hoot. And of course there’s a place for journals of opinion, though most or all are partisan and they almost uniformly lose money (The Nation briefly turned a profit a few years ago, much to their embarrassment).
But why Meacham thinks he can transition Newsweek to either market through the trenchant insights and glittering prose of George Will and Fareed Zakaria, beefed up with briefer summaries of old news, could justify a thin glossy weekly full ads, is quite beyond me.
Warren Terra
Oh, and from the linked Observer piece: Meacham’s second-ditch attempt was: Buy our magazine or we kill these journalists!
(Well, not really, that’s the first commenter repurposing what he did say. Not far off, though).
amorphous
OT: Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
jenniebee
OT (and much kewler) Joss Whedon twittered today asking "everybody on the internet" to watch Dollhouse tonight.
I’m going to, out of fear that if I don’t, Fox will not only cancel another Joss Whedon show, but they might rescind Firefly and do a recall on my box set. It’s an irrational fear, maybe, but Fox will do that to you.
DougJ
I liked that too. But it made so little sense that I decided not to include it.
GeneW
We subscribed to Newsweek for a few years, I can’t remember why, and there was just nothing to read in it. You could finish the damn thing in ten minutes, I get more out of my daily Post-Gazette than that. You’d think that a weekly would have time to put together some substantial content but it was all charts and lists and fluffy puff pieces.
Stuck
@DougJ:
I don’t know Cincinnatus from Cincinnati, but I did see Fargo and Being There.
The Other Steve
Not to sidetrack although that’s what I like to do.
I had a free copy of Serenity that came with my HD-DVD player. I looked at the box art when I got it and said "Oh god, this is one of those dumb crap sci-fi shoes like Red dwarf or something" But before selling my HD-DVD player this past month I decided to watch it. It was really good.
So then I went and watched Firefly on Hulu. That was actually a pretty good show. I’m surprised they canceled it. But then, I think in 2002 it was the wrong type of show for the times. It’d probably do better today if it had come out.
I don’t normally watch much TV, but I am now hooked on Life on Mars. It’s my new BFF!
The Other Steve
Newsweek isn’t that bad. Better than US News and World Report, or even Time.
Of course that’s because I’m a fan of Zakaria and George Will.
Zifnab
@jenniebee: Done and done.
Dracula
McCain also thinks rape victims need to work harder with their attackers, otherwise nothing will get done.
The Other Steve
Oh no! I’ve been sent to the moderation bucket. SERENITY NOW!
John PM
I believe that Newsweek’s attempts to make the magazine cooler will be just as successful as CCN’s attempt to go cooler by giving D.L. Hughley his own new show… Now, Dave Chapelle would have actually been a cool choice, but that would have required b-lls.
BTW, isn’t it odd that becoming more cool means hiring an alcoholic, atheist, Brit?
smiley
@jenniebee:
The guy who played the captain already has a new series on, I believe, CBS (don’t remember the name or if it’s on yet).
amorphous
@The Other Steve: You too? Maybe I shouldn’t advise DougJ on how he can cheaply increase the syze of hiz p3n15 to over 9000 inches.
John Cole
Those are both reasons to read him, if you ask me. Plus, he writes well, has strong opinions, and when you see him on tv, there is a solid chance he is hammered and will do something very entertaining.
gypsy howell
Think of the money we’ll save in the health care system on anesthesia with this newfangled, hepped-up version of Newsweek. You’ll be out like a light before you leave the waiting room.
SpotWeld
…there is a solid chance he is hammered and will do something very entertaining.
I think that’s how Glen Beck got his first broadcasting gig.
burnspbesq
Sadly, Newsweek (like the WaPo) is a strong candidate to be the last man standing in its category, because it will be cross-subsidized by the enormous profits of Kaplan.
burnspbesq
Attack of the 50-Foot Strawman:
Andrew actually had the stones to entitle a post "If the Republicans Were Intellectually Honest."
I am in awe.
Just Some Fuckhead
@John Cole: Excellent.
ricky
Pat Boone doing Tootie Fruity is more apt.
I used only two words in cancelling my subscription.
Karl Rove.
ricky
John Cole @ 50
I used to get all that and more from my mirror on a daily basis free. And I never thought the war was any good.
big woo
@John Cole: Pontificating well despite being obviously hammered is becoming a lost art.
Here’s to Hitch for keeping the dream alive.
Laura W
Debbie Wasserman Schultz going to town live on Tweety.
KRK
Easy now.
ricky
Laura @ 59
I don’t even want to go there.
Laura W
@ricky: Ok, I’ll bite.
Why, ricky?
Delia
@John Cole:
Yeah, Hitch writes well, and the next time there’s a bright, shiny new war on, he’ll find a hundred literate and amusing ways to tell you you’re a treasonous weenie for not supporting it.
dcBill
Living in DC, Newsweek is kinda redundant. I need the WaPo for my morning comics (woulda given it up years ago otherwise) and it’s still cheap. Meacham is a twit.
daryljfontaine
@SpotWeld:
Except where Hitchens = erudite drunkard, Beck = barely-functional methhead.
D
Dave C
If I had the money, I would consider subscribing to, perhaps, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, or Scientific American; but fucking Newsweek? Pfffffffft!
Andy K
@ Delia
Maybe you should qualify that as, "a shiny new war with any nation situated somewhere between Israel and India," ecause I don’t remember Hitchens making a case against Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, or any of Bushco’s other non-Muslim boogeymen. And in his defense, Hitchens was screaming about human rights in Iraq and Iran years before Bush took the Oval Office.
And please show me where Hitchens labeled treasonous those who don’t support the invasion of Iraq. I ask this sincerely, because, like Cole, I think he’s a good writer, and my memory may be clouded because Hitchens entertains me.
The Moar You Know
A fundamentalist is still a fundamentalist even if they espouse no religion at all, and Hitches is a fundamentalist. He’s the worst possible public face for those of us who espouse no faith. The absolute worst.
big woo
@The Moar You Know:
This would imply that there is a better public face.
I’m open to suggestions.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@jenniebee: I’m going to, out of fear that if I don’t, Fox will not only cancel another Joss Whedon show, but they might rescind Firefly and do a recall on my box set. It’s an irrational fear, maybe, but Fox will do that to you.
LOL! After the beating Firefly took – and Wonderfalls, if you followed the second-order fandom off that direction – it’s not that irrational.
I’ll be watching Dollhouse and I second Joss’ call for everybody else to do so. Especially if you’re a Nielsen family.
Brett
Newsweek really needs to have cool "weekly special" articles. They do occasionally have good stuff – the "Secrets of the 2008 Campaign" series was absolutely fascinating in terms of reading.
I mean, come on, they have a week between magazines to write articles. They should have better, more in-depth stuff.
Sirkowski
Pat Boon is a giant tool. But his versions of Crazy Train and Enter Sandman are teh awesome.
DougJ
That’s my feeling too. How can the New Yorker put out 5 long, well-researched pieces a week while Newsweek struggles to do one?
Mike D.
Has American Intelligence ever cursed Newsweek because they just up and printed an economic analysis superior to a $25 million Uncle Sam special, and consequently made them look like punks?
How about crawling up a Newsweek reporter’s ass with a microscope and playing Six Degrees of Mr. Clever Dick because anyone who can put two and two together without tapping international calls or being a Commie spy is obviously employing black magic of some sort?
Not to say that the Economist doesn’t have an agenda and doesn’t print the occasional face-palm load of crap (even taking the agenda into account), it’s just that if you tell your dog to play dead and he rolls over on his back with his feet in the air, you don’t panic and rush him to the vet, and neither does anyone else watching the trick.
What they say is, "Aw, that’s cute." Well okay, Bill Frist might try to diagnose the dog based on his back-oriented raised-feet symptoms, but who gives a fuck anymore.
Frank
I read both Time and Newsweek.
When I’m trapped in the doctor’s waiting room.