Posted on 02/10/2008 4:45:58 PM PST by RatherBiased.com
Jon Meacham is frustrated. After taking over Newsweek in 2006 as editor, he hasn't managed to get it out of its long-term rut as the second-best in the newsmagazine business. He also seems to have developed a severe case of Economist envy:
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!"
Kudos to the guy for standing up and telling the obvious truth: Newsweek isn't read by anyone short of Grandma and dental office patrons.
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.
Courageous? The guy must be channeling Dan Rather. Just the sort of pretentious thing you'd expect a journalism student to say.
"The success of The Economist—the fact that you read it, a black-turtlenecked guy at Columbia," Mr. Meacham began. But then he changed tack.
"Look, I need you," said Mr. Meacham. "And I need—I've got people out there risking their lives right now. The Economist is not, by the way ..." He changed tack again. "I've got four people in Baghdad who could be killed at any moment who are trying to tell the truth the best they can of that story. We have people in 13 different countries. We have a guy in Afghanistan who has Taliban sources who the federal government has asked about because we have better intelligence than government does—he's risking his life."
"And how to communicate that we have things to say that are both factually new and analytically new and to get you under the tent is a fact that scares me—not The Economist per se. It's an incredible frustration that I've got some of the most decent, hard-working, honest, passionate, straight-shooting, non-ideological people who just want to tell the damn truth, and how to get this past this image that we're just middlebrow, you know, a magazine that your grandparents get, or something, that's the challenge. And I just don't know how to do it, so if you've got any ideas, tell me."
A true Kodak moment. And yet, it's more than that, though. Here we have the editor of a major newsmag going out and publicly soliciting the opinions on how to run his publication. Where does he turn for such advice? To the knee-jerk left-wing students at the Columbia School of Journalism, a crowd that can't get any more elitist, snobby, and out-of-touch.
Here's an easy piece of free advice for you, Jon. Instead of making obviously false denials of ideological bias in the overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated media, admit that politics of your staff influences their writing just like you believe their race or gender can. If you worked harder at creating a balanced staff and a balanced product, you'd easily increase your readership. There are lots of right-leaning journalists out there who would love to report straight news for you right along your left-leaning reporters.
You might also try taking your liberal religion off your sleeve. Even secular people can spot the transparently political attempts of yours to rebrand ancient religious figures as prophets of liberalism. It simply doesn't work: the non-religious will laugh at you for still believing in myths (the Economist would never run a liberal Jesus article). Traditionalists, meanwhile, will rebuff your revisionism.
Though they do miss a lot of important nuances about America, the Economist is good ... like what Time or Newsweek could be except with little obvious bias and for grown ups!
My 24 year old daughter reads the Economist as do all her friends (and me). I haven’t read Time or Newsweek for years as I find them to be very boring. As a matter of fact, I find most US publications to be boring. Give me the London Times and the Telegraph and I devour them all week. So much to read, so amusing, so well-written. US publications seem to be edited to death, they all sound the same.
Newsweak is part of the Hussein Obama cult.
I started buying copies of the Economist to read on the treadmill. It’s not easy reading... but if you want to understand international news, it’s your best choice. It’s a very center-right magazine (emphasis on center).
I long for the days of old when sedition was punished with death.
The problem with that advice is that he truly doesn't believe he is not balanced. He lives in a tiny world of inward focused elites who don't even recognize that there are other opinions out there. I do not believe there is any hope for him, beyond failure of his magazine.
As a magazine merchandiser in stores, I can tell you that Newsweek has not sold in stores for years, either does Time. Economist did not sell for years but has in the last four years.FYI
I subscribed to the Economist two different times. It is biased, Eurocentric and pompous.
What pushed me over the edge was a supposedly in-depth article on the Middle East that pondered why America was generally pro-Israel while Europeans were much more “neutral.”
The Economist, finally concluded that it must be Evangelical Christianity in America that explained it, as if they were stumped for any other reason. Because Evangelical Christians have a strong affinity to the Judeo-Christian heritage, and obviously are very influential in the State Department, that must be the reason. The ever so insightful Economist staff never even wondered if MAYBE, even if just for discussion purposes, Europes less pro-Israeli attitude might have something to do with several thousand years of demonstrated episodes of European anti-Semitism, the latest being an episode as recently as 50 years ago?
They kill me. NPR in print. I didn’t renew.
Oldplayer
Time magazine is the worst drek published in the english language and has been for 40 years, at least. Newsweek is better than Time, not much better, but better. The Economist is a great magazine, liberal of course, but it really covers the entire world and is quite well written.
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