Howie Kurtz has one of those thousand violins playing just for the media type articles in the Washington Post today, chronicling the travails of Time and Newsweek and their “savvy” managing editors Rick Stengel and Jon Meacham. A couple things struck me. First:
The rival editors are turning out weeklies that are smaller, more serious, more opinionated and, though they are loath to admit it, more liberal. They are pursuing a more elite audience, in print and on the Web, abandoning the old Henry Luce notion of catering to the masses. It is nothing less than a survival strategy.
Now, the idea that Newsweek or Time will ever be the kind of product that appeals to a truly well-informed (that may be what they mean by “elite”) audience is laughable. I’ve never, ever heard anyone with half a brain tell me about a “great article they just read” in Time or Newsweek whereas I’ve heard that countless times about Mother Jones, The New Yorker, The Economist, The New York Review of Books, and The American Prospect. It’s worth noting that all the publications I just mentioned — with the exception of The Economist — are seen as liberal (though I’m not sure I agree). There is no way to produce quality journalism anymore without being seen as liberal. It’s time to just admit that.
The trouble, of course, is that Time and Newsweek spent so long catering to the Fox crowd — hiring Bill Kristol as a columnist, writing hagiographies of Bush, mocking attempts to investigate Alberto Gonzales — that it’s too late. For me, Time and Newsweek will never be anything more than Murdoch lite and I would never subscribe to either magazine, no matter how “liberal” they become.
But this got me too:
cut-to-the-bone corporate culture.
[….]Meacham, wearing a dark sweater in his office overlooking Central Park
….
Stengel, wearing a dark sweater in his office with a view of the Hudson River….
Now, if they’re really so broke, why do they have offices with such great views? Do companies ever think about economizing by cutting back on bigwig perks rather than by screwing everyday workers? To me, this is particularly galling when it’s a media company that acts like it was serving some higher cultural purpose.
I’ll be glad when both of those magazines go out of business (and I say that as someone who dreads the day when the NYT and WaPo are gone). They’ve never done anything but repeat conventional wisdom and suck up to power. Good riddance.
Update: Interestingly, in this same article, Howie quotes MM saying “Pomp and circumstance have been replaced with pimp and self-aggrandizement” without comment.
calipygian
I have a print subscription to four of the five magazines you mentioned.
I’ll be damned before I get one to either Time of Newsweek.
And you’re right – the only time Im reading either Time or Newsweek is if Im sitting on an airplane, waiting for takeoff because I picked one up on a lark in an airport kiosk. Can’t remember the last time I heard of a "must read" article in either one of them.
MikeJ
I’m sure Stengel and Meacham will respond to this slap in the face. They’ll bend over backwards to prove they aren’t evul lieberals.
DougJ
I’ve also found myself reading Rolling Stone, The National Journal, and some others I can’t remember right now when stuck somewhere and found one lying around, and in almost every case except for Time and Newsweek, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by at least one or two articles (I’m exaggerating because when it’s Maxim or Men’s Health or ESPN The Magazine, those sucked too.)
Starfish
It’s obvious that they could afford those views because they are sharing a wardrobe!
J.D. Rhoades
I haven’t read Time or Newsweek in years, but I used to subscribe to Time. Then I let my subscription lapse.
Oh. My. God.
I have never been harassed like I was by these people trying to get me to re-up. The mail every week was bad enough, but I could just toss that. Then the phone calls started. Literally, twice a week, offering me incredible savings and free gifts if I’d please please please renew my subscription. I told them not to call, told them to put me on the "do not call" list, to no avail.
Time is like a crazy ex-girlfriend, and it caused me to have a bad reaction whenever I even saw the magazine in a doctor’s office.
TenguPhule
To be fair, they’re probably locked in multiyear leases.
Of course, they could accept less money to spew bullshit, but that would obviously be asking too much.
srv
Meacham on wiki:
Doug, do you not have an appropriate appreciation for what elitist means? This guy reminds me of Thurston Howell.
calipygian
Boy, sounds like Meacham’s middle name should be douchebag.
That mini-bio is the very definition of the word.
dsc
I find The Week is consistantly worth reading for the "compendium" of news, the backgrounders are well done, and by God they’ve added a crossword puzzle on the back page. I go cover to cover every weekend. And great recipes. Everything in the Magazine comes from another source–right, left, blogs, international newspapers, and tabloids.
I just went 6 months without the New Yorker–never again. MoJones, MoEarthNews, Vanity Fair, Wired (for the bathroom), and Fast Company are paid for and well read at our house.
but right now I can’t stop looking at seed catalogues
Zifnab
No. SATSQ Vol Eleventy One Billion and Six.
Time and Newsweek are published by the combined weight of thousands of feces-flinging monkeys pounding away at their MacBooks (that’s right, I said your crappy journalists use crappy computers. Whatchagonnadoaboutit?) What’s a few dozen monkeys more or less? But we’ve only got one Company Executive Brothel. Can’t really get rid of that or no one would voluntarily work for this giant steaming pile of crap.
Fulcanelli
Well put, DougJ. We’ve seen what happens when poor, hapless conservative writers cross the Rubicon and what they get for their trouble.
Threats of silly putty vandalism from the Red
TubeStateStrokeStrike Force! Oy, what next? Bloody donuts wrapped in a green and white paisley scarf in their beds?John O
Shit, Zifnab! I had the EXACT same post 1/2 done!
Creepily exact. You must be a fucking genius.
smiley
Arch rival of the Baylor School (which now appears to be integrated both racially and genderly), alma mater to one John Hannah, HOF foootballer. Confession: I went there for a while because my public high school was about to let the other in. Not my choice. I was 14. I was sent. BTW, I caused a stir because the outfitter for the uniforms didn’t have straight collar shirts in my size and they gave me buttoned down. For that I was the coolest Freshman on campus. FWIW, that experience is part of the reason why I’m both an academic and a liberal.
Incertus
That’s probably due as much to Time and Newsweek being written at an eighth-grade reading level as anything else. It’s just not challenging. They’re the USA Today of news magazines.
KG
People still read dead tree magazines? Really? Other than occasionally picking up a copy of Men’s Health to get some ideas to vary my work out, I can’t remember the last time I read an actual magazine.
I’m also calling for a moratorium on the use of the words "liberal" and "conservative" for the next ten years. What passes for liberal and conservative these days are just sad shells of formerly great ideologies.
John O
(Except that the brothers and I got 67 year old PC-literate Mom a Macbook for her birthday–wildly extravagant by historical standards–and she cannot stop raving about how much her life is improved.)
Now, considering where she was coming from…
Halteclere
I used to have a Newsweek subscription for I wanted to know more about what was going on and Newsweek was the news magazine of choice of my parents when I was growing up.
Then I discovered political blogs on the intertubs, starting off with Glenn Greenwald within a month or so of him starting his blog. The whole l’affaire de Plame and Glenn’s (and other bloggers) fantastic following of the story, which Newsweek barely bothered to mention, opened my eyes that Newsweek was more of a news gatekeeper instead of a resources of a news source.
Plus I got tired of every. damn. issue kissing baby-boomer ass.
I received my last subscription just before it was announced that Rove and Kos were slated to be dueling contributors. Talk about (having Rove contribute to the magazine) reinforcing my decision to not renew.
sgwhiteinfla
Incertus said
That was one of the best analogies I have seen in some time. The good folks at Time simply comment on what everybody else is saying most of the time rather than do any reporting of their own. Every once in awhile you might get an article with an interview in it but those have become few and far in between now. But they are also like the Friedman’s of news magazines in that while they don’t deserve it lots of average everyday people hold them in pretty high regard.
jxn
vote on bush’s presidency here:
looks like 42% rate him excellent
John Cole
I have never read an issue of Rolling Stone that DID NOT have at least one, and usually 2-3 well written pieces.
And while this will probably get me laughed at, Sports Illustrated is one of the best written magazines out there. You may not care for the subject matter, but the writing is always top notch.
Mike in NC
Meacham has ties to the religious right. Kurtz got slammed by Andrew Sullivan for being a "stenographer" for McCain/Palin. So much for objectivity.
calipygian
As much as I find Time and Newsweek distasteful, why is paper still being provided for the Weekly Standard, New Republic and the National Review? They have long ago been diverting precious amounts of pulp from being made into toilet paper.
And while we’re at it, what kind of God makes the Seattle P-I fold but doesn’t burn down the grounds where the Moonie Times is printed and sow the fields with antabuse and Nicorette patches so that no journalist could take root there again?
A fucking useless god indeed.
jprice vincenz
I agree with you, John, about RS and SI, both better written than Time and Newsweek. Nobody’s mentioned Harper’s, which for the last several years has printed great anti-Admin articles, including–now bear with me–one very memorable article about why Kissinger is a war criminal by Kissypoo Chris Hitchens. I’m gonna let Harper’s laps, though, b/c the irrelevant filler and terrible book reviews and fiction mean that I’m only reading less than half of the publication.
After Steno Judy and all the uncritical war cheerleading at the NYT and WashPo, I’ll be glad to see those collapse into their self-dug shitholes. They’re Pravda lite
I predict that I and many others continue to move away from paper publications, while occasionally looking at small-city papers for local stories online, as quickly as we all give up on television news, which is wall-to-wall garbage. I just ran through the television lineup and saw "Campbell Brown: No Bias" and thinking of her oh-so-villager husband, laughed at the unintended irony. I understand the Right’s hatred of the MSM for precisely the opposite reasons they cite. My question: can the MSM survive if twenty five percent or so on both ends of the spectrum spend uncountable hours critiquing them and ignoring most of them (to wit, Time and Newsweek)?
Oh, man, the way Kurtz quotes Malkin shows how he’s half-tool/half-man whore. I wish we could ignore him and he’d just go away and take his hairpiece with him.
Wow, The Stand has a lot of republican actors in it.
Notorious P.A.T.
Here are some of the serious articles that serious Newsweek has printed in the past 6 months:
Is Barack Obama the antichrist?
Sarah Palin should be nominated as a Supreme Court justice
Investigating people who committed torture is wrong!
When president, Barack Obama should ask himself "what would Dick Cheney do?"
mistermix
I haven’t purchased a Newsweek or Time in years, and aside from the bad writing, this is a big reason. That, and the "big think" articles they crank out regularly. "Is God Still Alive? We surveyed 1500 Americans to find out.."
Notorious P.A.T.
I’ve often said that there are higher standards for sports reporting in America than in straight news.
jenniebee
Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone do a better job of covering policy and world events than either Time or Newsweek. And they have better covers too.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
DougJ
Superman turns 50, anyone?
jrg
You mean people would rather read about what’s going on in, say, the Middle East than read Coulter bitch about the liberals week after week? What a fucking shock.
The "conservative" movement got shafted by a bunch of ignorant and malicious commentators out to make a buck. Poetic justice for sure. It would be sad if the GOP were not so vile.
Dork
Neil Cavoto called today for Obama to appoint the US Airways pilot head of his financial team. Tongue in cheek, maybe, but I cannot wait to see how many FauxNews ‘necks take this seriously and begin to parrot this on blogs.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Fxd.
Seriously, could he be talking about some other magazines called Time and Newsweak?
‘Cos the only ones I know by those names have become graphics heavy twee Oo aren’t we clever? wastes of toilet paper that are slowly devolving to fill the void People left behind when People decided to become Us or We or Them or whatever the fuck the stupid gossip rag I have to look at when I buy smokes in the morning is called.
A lot of editors made a mistake about seven to ten years ago when they looked at their slumping sales and decided that because a certain demographic had more disposable income than ever before, they’d go after that demographic and to hell with their traditional readership. The only problem: The target demographic wouldn’t be seen dead reading magazines like Time and Newsweek. That’s what mom and dad read.
John O
True story:
At DKos in Chicago, I went to the TIME party (most generously sponsored) and had a ton of fun with some of their bigwigs.
This was before Joe Klein got beaten into submission by his commenters, and blogging in general, so he wasn’t there, but most of the rest were.
Anyway, I get one of their stars to talkin’, and I say my subscription to TIME was cancelled immediately upon the hiring of Bill Kristol. This person was VERY passionate about getting me back. At one point, I said, "Hire Digby."
"We’re not going to hire Digby." Well, yeah.
(Now I would encourage this person to lobby for Larison, as well, thanks to our host.)
Anyway, a few cocktails later I got the scoop, in this form: "What if I told you Kristol would be gone by the end of the year?"
Since I wasn’t quite yet high-schooled, I managed a question: "Does this mean I wasn’t the only one who cancelled when you hired him?"
My entire being oozed that this person could trust me.
"Yes."
The blogosphere and free markets actually do have a place.
Keith Patrick
Speaking of things on their last legs, apparently the, uhh, lemme check…..yep, the current VP has apparently been confined to a wheelchair because while he’s man enough to order torture, he’s not man enough to not pull a muscle getting the fuggout.
slaney black
Dark sweaters?
Hey, here’s a clue, dickwads: if you really wanna come off serious about digging outta your impending frickin’ doom – at least do it in a goddamn tie!
Warren Terra
I dunno about that. The only time I ever read it was when, about ten years ago, I received it after moving into an apartment for about six months because the previous inhabitant hadn’t updated them with his new address (he made sure to get it changed, perhaps unsurprisingly, just in time for the swimsuit issue). I found it to be uninteresting pap, poorly written, albeit accompanied by incredible photographs.
On the other hand, professional sportswriter and avocational political pundit Charlie Pierce, who is a freaking god and whose weekly letters to Eric Alterman are mandatory reading, insists that sports journalism is more honest and usually better-written than anything you’ll find elsewhere in the paper, and in particular that sports pundits are held far more accountable for bad judgment than are political pundits, and I’m certainly not going to argue with someone I just called a god earlier in this same admittedly long sentence. So I guess I’ll ascribe it to a weak six months for S.I.
OriGuy
@Keith Patrick: A 68 year old man with a pacemaker was carrying moving boxes? Surrrrre. He probably slipped in the ichor left by the last demon he summoned.
DougJ
@John O
Jay Carney, right? I have a special fondness for him because I really got into blogging after nailing him on Clinton’s approval ratings and getting written up in TNR online for doing so.
Were you at the talk with him and Mike Allen as well?
mcd410x
Perhaps we’ll not play frat boy cops/robbers in the Oval Office anymore. The worst part of the last 8 … the loathing of knowledge. Sick.
Knowledge is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. The last 8 years, not so much.
Favorite GOP mantra: Gov’t can’t solve your problems — and we’ll screw it up completely to make sure of it!
Seriously, what in the last 8 WASN’T a handout? Giant drug bill? Iraq? The collapse of our economy/TARP? Back the SUV up to the Treasury! It’s all gotta go!
One last thing: WE DON’T TORTURE, we’re the UNITED STATES of AMERICA.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Keith Patrick: His doctors told him he was getting to old to skull fuck kittens, but would he listen?
Christ, why is that evil fuck hanging around here? I thought he’d get the hell back to Wyoming.
And why the hell is MSNBC running a 20 year old photo of the Arch-douche?
gwangung
That might be so when it comes to personalities and such.
But when it comes to analysis, statistics and facts and figures, I’ve found sports journalists to be just as innumerate, hidebound, clichebound and all around STOOPID as their non-sports counterparts.
Rosali
The NYTimes just announced a big bailout loan from an investor. It may be gone sooner than we thought.
Fern
@gwangung:
Especially cliche bound.
Mike in NC
Bank on it and be prepared to hear it 24/7 for the next four years. Meanwhile I have a bottle of bubbly in the fridge to pop tomorrow night.
John O
DougJ,
I got into a different though equally interesting conversation with Jay, probably a good 15 minutes one-on-one, but it was on a different subject.
Suffice it to say that Jay is a bedwetter of sorts, who bought into the whole "one terrorist attack is the horror of all time" theme prevalent among his ilk. He was very generous in all ways, so I didn’t (and don’t) hold his "Beltway Wisdom" against him, thought he was smart and engaging, and simply considered the whole experience interesting and a little surreal.
I did my best with Jay on that subject, but no, the story wasn’t about him, nor will I allow everyone to do process of elimination type inquiries from here on out.
It doesn’t matter who it was. It seems entirely reasonable for me to protect my sources. :-)
JGabriel
@TenguPhule:
Yes, or given that they’re both fairly old publications, especially Time, they might even own their respective buildings.
Also, once you’re in Manhattan (and I know this because I live here), which may have been a necessity for them way back when, it’s not that unusual to have a view of the Hudson or East River. It’s a narrow island and the rivers run the whole length of it.
The Central Park view admittedly is a little rarer and more expensive.
.
sgwhiteinfla
If you ever want to see big name media types eviscerated on a daily basis just swing by Swampland at any given time. Between Mike "tire swinging" Scherer and Joe "I am now a liberal" Kline it makes for high minded comedy almost every single day. I think Jay took the job with Biden just to get away from the ass kickings he had to endure during the campaign season.
Of course Karen Tumulty is there too and she is the anti Carney for the most part. Smart and respectful of the commenters she actually engages in healthy debate. Unless universal healthcare comes up then its back to Villager mode. We tried to point out one day that the Governator’s supposed push for universal healthcare in CA was just a political ploy and she went ballistic and totally shut down, unwilling to consider the evidence put before her.
But like I said before about Time and Newsweek being analagous to Friedman, you won’t find any major magazine contributers/online MSM bloggers, who are in higher demand than the Swampland mental midgets. Ana Marie Cox practically begged for and got a new job while appearing on Rachel Maddow’s show one night.
Scott H
I haven’t read SI for a long time, but the photography was insanely great back in the day – for anyone interested in photography, and whoever had the opportunity to try their hand at shooting sports. Still true?
I can’t remember the last time I saw a serious link to Time or Newsweek. Newsweek has Fareed Zakaria on their international staff. I catch him on CNN – the only responsible show in all of cable news. A quick Google and I find he has his own web site with an archive of articles.
Kyle
Boy, sounds like Meacham’s middle name should be douchebag.
I saw him on the Daily Show recently – his first and last name should be douchebag as well.
He was promoting a book he wrote on Andrew Jackson, and every point of history was made with sniggering comparison to Clinton’s genital adventures, until the audience started to turn on him. It was like watching one of the Fox and Friends empty-suit haircuts in action; that this Southern aristocracy twit is actually in charge of Newsweak is abominable.
I was going through some old papers and found a Newsweek international edition from the late 70s. The jerkoffs running the mag now should be forced to read their product from three decades ago cover to cover until they either commit seppuku in shame or commit themselves to matching the quality they once had.
gwangung
@Fern: Yeah, well I find bloggers a whole lot more knowledgeable, more numerate and more able to string coherent arguments together than the mass media types.
If sports writers are supposedly better than other journalists (and I sure ain’t arguing against that), then the whole profession is pretty pathetic.
oh really
Over the years I have had personal knowledge of a number of articles that have appeared in either Newsweek or Time.
In every case, the articles had serious factual errors. As news sources they are fluff and completely untrustworthy.
As entertainment? C’mon, there must be thousands of publications more entertaining than either will ever be.
They represent a waste of time, money, paper, and everything else it takes to produce a magazine. Unlike some newspapers, were these two magazines to disappear the only loss would be to those whose jobs depended on them.
Mike in NC
I gave up on TIME roughly two years ago yet we still get a subscription letter from them in the snail mail almost on a weekly basis.
Common Sense
Until Peter King leaves SI their writing is worthless — although at least they somehow duped ESPN into taking Rick Reilly off their back page.
The photography really is superb — I don’t think there is a better option available. Their columnists are as full of crap and wedded to "truisms" that anyone not caught up in their bubble can instantly recognize as anhy beltway columnist ever has been.
I think sports and political journalists are actually very similar. They are willing and happy to take on "the other guy." This may be the management of the hometown team or the star player. Sometimes they may even be right or able to make a coherent case — frequently they are not capable of such and are merely providing controversy because it sells. No one takes on the institution though. No major sportswriter wants to be stuck in the bleachers for a playoff game in Green Bay. They want the cushy Press Box Seat with a free buffet and easy access to canned meaningless quotes from coaches and players. So the NFL stays unimpeachable. MLB is flawless until the conventional wisdom dictates otherwise.
SI is as bad as Newsweek/Time. They refuse to actually go outside their comfort zone and report on real news. They run screaming from anything that may threaten their cash cow — thus no real investigatory journalism into things like decades of steroid abuse in every major professional sport or the horrid lack of return on investment in these sports palaces. No insightful articles on the eye opening statistical research pioneered by Bill James and translated into footballese at Football Outsiders.
I cancelled my SI subscription when I was 14 years old and realized that they weren’t telling me a single thing about the sports I loved that wasn’t manifestly knock-me-upside-the-forehead obvious. I read one occasionally at the Dentists or such, and am still amazed at the drivel they put to paper. Seriously, Peter King’s search for the perfect cup o’ joe sandwiched around Odes to Brett is no different from Powerline kissing up to Bush’s misunderestimated greatness, and it certainly is nothing to emulate.
DougJ
That is true. I have the same complaint.
But I agree with John that it is often very well-written.
Incertus
@gwangung: King Kaufman is one of the exceptions, as is Mike Wilbon, and I love reading both of them. But you’re right, in general.
Common Sense
@DougJ:
Using your own metric, I have never in my life recommended an SI article to anyone for it’s penetrating analysis. They are capable of feel good drivel about some athlete’s latest charitable contribution, but if I want real groundbreaking sports analysis I go to the same place I do for political analysis — the internet.
The sad thing is political journalism was much quicker to respond to outside unconventional analysis than sports journalists are. While Buzz Bessinger rants about foul mouthed bloggers and Joe Morgan is inexplicably held up as a model for insightful analysis, Nate Silver had more impact in six months covering politics than Baseball Prospectus has managed in over a decade of doing the same thing on the sports end.
It’s sad that Olbermann is able to do more to bring previously ignored voices to the forefront at MSNBC than he was able to do at ESPN.
Common Sense
Incidentally — all bitching about the filter aside, it’s wonderful to be able to type this from a friend’s house in Maryland under my normal name and have no ip block in effect. Sadly I’ve got to get a few hours sleep before the big day manana. Went down to the mall today and I believe it’s going to take an extra hour just to wade through the miles of vendors selling schlock with a man’s name on it.
I was an Obama supporter and volunteer, and I came to DC expecting to celebrate like it’s the end of the world and the begenning of a new one. I also don’t have nearly the same spasms over the inagural preparations that John seems to be having. To be honest I’ve been amazed by the meticulous preparation that has been put into this. Every rest stop from Philadelphia to DC has extra porta potties installed. The city has rerouted their entire Metro system to run one way into town the day of. It’s nice to see people taking this seriously and treating it responsibly. Still, it’s incredibly disconcerting to see acres of stands selling nothing but merchandise with the man’s name on it. While I am no defender of the stupid messiah meme that some love to latch on to, this crap gives them way too much ammo. And it’s just way too reminiscent of my college days when I mistakenly went to a Phish concert and found 20,000 good natured morons who happily throw their money away on absolutely anything with the right word on the front. Critical analysis people — an ugly tacky shirt is an ugly tacky shirt. It doesn’t matter whose face is silkscreened on it.
Conservatively Liberal
I don’t know about that. As a teenager I can remember some of the finest writing I had read to that time was in Penthouse. I mean, I was like glued to those pages. Or was that the pages became stuck together like there was glue on them?? It was something like that, you know, old age?
How’s them Stillers?
pattonbt
Like others above, I only read magazines at the airport, something to pass the time on the flight. And the only one I get is The Economist. Ive always loved The Economist but didnt realize there was some sort of inside joke about it until the Palin flap about what she read. So now I dont know whether to be ashamed to admit that I read The Economist or not.
What exactly is the inside joke about The Economist anyway?
Oh, and agreed, Time and Newsweek suck. Also.
DougJ
No joke I know of. It was traditionally considered conservative, that’s all.
R-Jud
My Dad subscribes to Time. On our twice-yearly visits I will thumb through one in the bathroom, and it always seems they’ve increased the font size, along with the number of charts, lists, and big pictures. I’ve tried to get him to read blogs like this, or Sully, or the folks at Obsidian Wings, but he still thinks bloggers are all slackers living in their mothers’ basements. Even Paul Krugman.
We get National Geographic and Private Eye. The latter is a far superior news source to any of the major papers over here. It never fails to leave me in a spluttering rage, but I can soothe it by looking at the purty pictures in the former. When I fly or take a long train journey, I pick up a copy of American Vogue, along with either an Economist or a New Yorker to hide it in (although honestly, Vogue’s food writer isn’t half bad).
rachel
@DougJ: The latest one has a 2~3 page article about why we won’t miss The Fratboy.
Comrade Baron Elmo
Word.
One of my co-workers recently brought in a vintage issue of Time from the sixties he’d unearthed in his attic; I was floored. There were about twice as many pages, a quarter of the ads and a sixth of the photos as in today’s version. And a large percentage of the photos were in tasteful black and white.
So… what filled this Time of yore? Words. Ideas. Lengthy, substantial pieces dealing with genuine news stories in the detail they deserved. I kid you not, there were single articles in that rumpled old magazine that contained more text than an entire goddamned issue of today’s Time.
If the crap they foist on the American public today with the word TIME on the front is the best they’ve got, they deserve to go spinning down the drain.
Deborah
@R Jud:
How is it physically possible to hide a Vogue inside The New Yorker or The Economist? I’d think you’d need the Yellow Pages for a major city at the very least.
I rather like Vogue; I only pick up a copy once or twice a year, but I give them credit for writing about what they’re about–fashion–and if they’re writing on something else not pretending that the fashion choices of the congresswoman or poet are relevant to the subject. And Teen Vogue is a step up from the other Teen magazines.
I can’t imagine not having print magazines. I subscribe to The New Yorker and Science News, which I carry along for material to read while waiting. And as much time as I spend on the internet, that’s overwhelmingly short-format stuff, especially blogs. I count on these magazines to produce articles on things I would never have guessed I would find interesting. Case in point in last week’s New Yorker, Samantha Powers’ story on a Christian activist who runs a legal aid charity.
Good point about the baby boomer kissing of Newsweek.
bartkid
>hiring Bill Kristol as a columnist
I thought NW also hired Karl Rove.
R-Jud
@Deborah:
It’s a joke. And I agree, US Vogue does what it does very well– Wintour is a good editor. I’ve read a few issues of British Vogue while waiting in offices and stuff, and it’s not nearly as good. It may as well be called Kate Moss Monthly.
When I lived in the US I subscribed to the New Yorker. I fondly remember laying aside an evening to read the whole thing.
Jamey
My office has a view of the River Hudson. (Or did, till I got the sack in a salary dump–part of the new, leaner, more "relevant" book publishing field.) And I’d wager that I make less than 1/10th what Meacham makes at Newsweek.
Point is, a river- or park view is kind of inescapable in Manhattan. If you want to argue the value of making NYC your headquarters, that’s another matter.
deadrody
So let me get this straight – there is no way anyone on the planet is ever capable of writing something from the conservative viewpoint and having it be considered "quality journalism".
Wow. At least you’re all coming around to admitting just how far to the left the media and it’s fans really are.