The Death of Newsweek

Newsweek Magazine is dead.

Or at least the Newsweek that I have read for a very long time.

I really like Newsweek. I don't read the local paper and occasionally on a trip I will read USA Today but that is like reading people magazine. So Newsweek was my source for more in depth information on whatever was going on at the time. I took what they said with a big grain of salt but I still learned alot.

For the past few weeks or months I've noticed that I've found Newsweek really boring. I thought that I was just getting bored with the same old news and the same old problems. It turns out that wasn't the case. I think Newsweek was slowly becoming the hideous version that they are now.

I got my new Newsweek in the mail the other day and as usual, I waited to read it until I was on a trip and in the airplane, I mean my hotel room.

The format of the magazine sucks. I don't like the print they chose. It's very small and hard to read. And it has long essays and boring crapola about stuff I really don't care about. I was so disoriented. I couldn't figure out what was going on. So I read the editor's column in the front. It said that with the Internet and so on that all of the news was already out there and they weren't going to rehash the news with little or no new content. So what they are going to do is bore me to death with commentary and drivel. So I canceled my subscription immediately.

Here are some comments about the new Newsweek from the soon to be fired editor.

Editor Jon Meachem wrote that the "reinvented and rethought" Newsweek would focus more on "original reporting, provocative (but not partisan) arguments and unique choices" and less on the "straightforward news piece."

Assistant managing editor Kathleen Deveny wrote in an article about the redesign that the changes were brought about by the shifting media landscape ushered in by the Internet.

She said the new Newsweek would eschew celebrity news and was seeking to appeal to "smart, educated readers who are looking for a publication that can help them put the flood of news into perspective."

"We will focus on a smaller, more devoted, slightly more affluent audience," she said, adding the magazine would drop its guaranteed circulation from 2.6 million to 1.5 million by January and increase subscription prices.

So I guess I'm not devoted, smart, educated or affluent enough to read the new Newsweek.

I should have known something was up when columnist Anna Quindlen "retired".

Goodbye Newsweek. Hello Time.