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Newsweek editor Jon Meacham says Newsweek having Obama on the cover numerous times and thorough coverage of him is not to blame for the magazine's downfall. Transcript below: JON MEACHAM, EDITOR, NEWSWEEK: I’m not pointing fingers, I’m not whining. This is the life we’ve chosen. HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: Right. MEACHAM: I believe in this magazine and I’m going to do everything I possibly can and so is everybody at Newsweek to find a future. KURTZ: But as you move more toward opinion, I believe that Newsweek came to be seen as more liberal, you started running more liberal columnists. I’ve...

President Obama may cultivate an image as the unflappable Mr. Cool, but he can get hot under the collar too, according to a new book. In "The Promise: President Obama, Year One," by Newsweek senior editor Jonathan Alter, the author recounts a series of private blow-ups - including a particularly fiery one involving the nation's top military brass. "A presidential dressing down unlike any in the United States in more than half a century," is how Alter describes the October 2009 eruption. [Snip] But it's often the flashes of anger, not amour, that shine through Alter's tome, including: Asked...

NewsBusters on Wednesday shared a truly heartbreaking video with its readers dealing with the Nashville flood that so many people in the nation hadn't heard about due to the media's focus on the Gulf oil spill and Faisal Shahzad. News outlets are beginning to try to explain to their patrons why such a devastating event got so over-shadowed.

With the Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) already considering the sale of Newsweek, the first quarter results surely cemented it. While other magazines were showing signs of life, Newsweek continued its steep decline, with revenue dropping 36 percent to $29.4 million driven by a 38 percent loss in ad revenue. By comparison, the Washington Post showed an 8 percent decrease in print ad rev in Q1—and an 8 percent increase for digital revenue. (our coverage.) Still, by reducing expenses, the company managed to narrow Newsweek‘s losses to $2.3 million for Q1, compared with $20.3 million in Q109. The ‘09 quarter...

Last year, Newsweek redesigned itself with an eye toward failure. Literally. The newsmagazine was getting itself out of the newsmagazine business and pursuing a higher-end market through a combination of news analysis and opinion. The idea behind the magazine’s redesign was to hasten its contraction from a circulation over 2 million to one around 1 million, while simultaneously raising the cover price. This was not, in and of itself, a silly idea. What Newsweek and its editor, Jon Meacham, were acknowledging is that the 2 million circulation was illusory, and that the actual readership of the magazine, with people...

Can Newsweek magazine survive? The answer is that no one, including the people who work there, knows for sure. With yesterday's bombshell announcement that The Washington Post Co. is putting the magazine up for sale, Time remains the last newsmagazine standing. U.S. News & World Report has long since gotten out of the print weekly business. Now a perfectly fine buyer may emerge, but it seems a foregone conclusion that Newsweek at best will be a shriveled version of its former self. In fact, some people think that's already the case. Don Graham, the Post Co. chief executive, told me...

The Washington Post Co. is putting Newsweek up for sale in hopes that another owner can figure out how to stem losses at the 77-year-old weekly magazine. The publishing industry has been struggling as businesses cut back on ad budgets during the recession. But Newsweek, along with Time magazine and U.S. News & World Report, faces a particular challenge finding a relevant niche in the age of up-to-the-second online news. Once handy digests of the week's events, they have been assailed by competitors on the Web that pump out a constant stream of news and commentary. Despite staff cuts, Newsweek...

Newsweek will go to some pretty silly lengths to paint Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as no liberal hippies on foreign policy. Their cover story promoted Hillary as "Obama's Bad Cop" and a "steely messenger." The cover story by Michael Hirsh went further, comparing Hillary and Obama to the 1970s TV buddy cops "Starsky and Hutch."

Does anyone out there remember the Coffee Parties? You can be forgiven if you have forgotten them. They made a brief appearance due to media driven hype over a month ago and then quickly disappeared from view when they inspired a collective yawn from the public. The photo at right shows a typical Coffee Party "rally" from back then. Typical in that few people showed up to protest against private ownership (aka free enterprise). Even the organizer of the Coffee Party non-movement, Annabel Park, seems to have lost her enthusiasm for the cause as evidenced by her Twitter page. After...

Stewart Rhodes does not seem like an extremist. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and a former U.S. Army paratrooper and congressional staffer. He is not at all secretive. In February he was sitting at a table at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at a fancy downtown hotel in Washington, handing out fliers and selling T shirts for his organization, the Oath Keepers. Rhodes says he has 6,000 dues-paying members, active and retired police and military, who promise never to take orders to disarm U.S. citizens or herd them into concentration camps. Rhodes told a NEWSWEEK...

During the 2008 Presidential campaign, "mainstream" media confused the public over whether Obama ever released any real proof of his claim to being born in Hawaii. The confusion continues. Jonathan Alter, senior editor at Newsweek magazine, told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on February 20, 2009 that "The Obama campaign actually posted his birth certificate from a Hawaii hospital online." But Alter lied, since "the Obama campaign" never "actually posted his birth certificate from a Hawaii hospital online." Remarkably, no hospital in Hawaii yet lays definitive claim to be the birthplace of the sitting President. .. On the FactCheck.org website, the claim...

America is Back!, Newsweek declares this week. Cover-story author Daniel Gross says the economy is making a strong comeback, defying the odds and surprising the naysayers. "The turnaround we've had since [Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy], while not completely satisfying, has been pretty remarkable," he tells Henry Blodget in the accompanying clip. A combination of unprecedented government intervention matched by rapid restructuring and increased productivity in the private sector has resulted in an economy stronger than anyone would have imagined just 18 months ago, Gross argues. Although the National Bureau of Economic Research - the official tracker of recessions - continues to...

Unsurprisingly, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham bowed deeply to New Yorker editor David Remnick and his new book on their agreed-upon hero, Barack Obama: "envy gives way to admiration" of Remnick’s skills, he wrote in his "Top of the Week" commentary in the magazine. Meacham hyped the notion that when asked about the "racial component of the opposition," Obama told Remnick "I tend to be fairly forgiving about the anxiety that people feel about change."

At Newsweek, the global warming crusade remains an important mission. The magazine's latest push came in an interview by CNN contributor Fareed Zakharia of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. Zakaria threw softballs to Chu throughout the article, as Newsweek showed it was simply a matter of when - not if - the administration should continue to pursue a drastic environmental agenda. It was revealing which questions were - and were not - asked of the president's Energy Secretary. Zakaria made zero reference to ClimateGate, the economic consequences of cap-and-trade and alternative energy, and no mention of the actual validity of climate...

The Michelle Obama's Mirror's Blog (MOTUS) broke a story last night about Newsweek "photoshopping" the image of someone, Karl Marx, The Shroud of Turin, or ZZ Top, onto an apple sitting in front of Michelle Obama on the cover of its 3-15-2010 issue. Shortly after the post, Newsweek "cropped" the cover on its site and is rumored to be firing someone today. MOTUS still has the cover posted here: http://www.michellesmirror.com/2010/03/is-this-easter-miracle.html it's really unbelievable.

Why is there a portrait of Karl Marx in the apple sitting in front of our “fashion icon” First Lady, in her latest appearance on the cover of Newsweek (which replaces her bulbous giant belts with Nosferatu nails as the de rigeur accessory for spring)?

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do The press finally falls out of love with Obama. By Howard Fineman | NEWSWEEK Published Mar 12, 2010 From the magazine issue dated Mar 22, 2010 Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, was 50 minutes late for his briefing, apparently a record for tardiness, but few reporters in the White House press room bothered to feign outrage; they didn't seem all that eager to ask him questions anyway. When his boss flew to Missouri to give another of his "high octane" (The New York Times), "impassioned" (The Washington Post) health-care speeches, no cable...

I'm not going to bash or rant about a Newsweek article about Turkey by Owen Matthews-shocking and dangerous as it is--but rather talk about what is wrong and inaccurate about it. That article is part of a new wave of defeatism sweeping the West, though it still remains subordinate to the more ostensibly attractive idea that there is no real conflict or at least one easy to fix by Western concessions. Here's the title: "The Army Is Beaten: Why the U.S. should hail the Islamists." Yes, we should thank the Islamists for taking over Turkey. But wait a minute! The...

Have you heard? The War on Terror is over! In one of the most asinine statements by a “post-American” progressive, Newsweek editor and CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria declares Islamist extremism is defeated. After telling Americans last year to “learn to live with radical Islam,” Zakaria proclaims, “The enemy is not vast; the swamp is being drained. Al Qaeda has already lost in the realm of ideology. What remains is the battle to defeat it in the nooks, crannies, and crevices of the real world.” “The focus of our concern now is not a broad political movement but a handful of...

Newsweek’s latest issue features an article by managing editor Daniel Klaidman that blatantly associates Republican criticism of the Obama administration with terrorism. Its title in the table of contents is "Terror Begins at Home: The GOP’s Scare Tactics." Inside the magazine, the headline is "Terror Begins at Home: Fearmongering Politicians Are Scoring Cheap Political Points at the Expense of the American People." In the magazine, the article is illustrated with a blurry drawing of male underwear. Online, its lead image is a finger-pointing photo of Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.). Is there an article in Newsweek that isn’t an editorial? Klaidman...