Whoever is employed as Sam Gosling's publicist, congratulations. You somehow got Newsweek to manufacture an entire article promoting your psychology professor client, his new book Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, and the premise that the crap you keep in your house might say something about you as a person. Well, no crap. CONTINUED »
The new CNN show hosted by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria will be called Fareed Zakaria — GPS, for "global public square." Clever. [AP]
Staffers at the Washington Post Co.'s Newsweek are supposedly upset at how many celebs the Time Inc.'s Time 100 attracts. Supposedly. [P6]
Newsweek might not move to Ground Zero after all. Soho is suddenly much more appealing. [NYP]
In yesterday's New York Times, both CollegeHumor.com, a website for retired frat guys looking to kill time at the $120,000-starting i-banker jobs, and the Onion News Network, a faux video news title, got the profile treatment. How fitting, then, that a newspaper so focused on short attention spans and inventing truths is the same newspaper that both Newsweek and the New York Post claim Mayor Michael Bloomberg is eying for a possible purchase, BECAUSE THAT MAN CAN BUY WHATEVER HE WANTS. It's all thanks to a Michael Wolff suggestion, in Vanity Fair, that Bloomberg do just that.
The theory of a Bloomberg-owned Times has its doubters. Those that should also be on the list of disbelievers: Newsweek. CONTINUED »
Why did Jonathan Alter and Howard Fineman refuse the Newsweek buyout deals that 111 other people accepted, even when they were among the sweetest offers made in recent history?
Perhaps it's because both of them are earning into the six figures at MSNBC with on-air analyst gigs, we understand.
Had they chose to leave Newsweek, they may have received their news magazine salary for up to two years, but they also would've become much less desirable commodities at MSNBC, and risked losing those lucrative contracts.
Though we're too weak to tally the actual percentage of Newsweek's staff that is leaving through buyout offers, some 111 of them will be gone by the end of the year. The most senior of them will collect two year's pay as severance (just enough to float them until they can find another gig that pays them such extreme fees) and, since more staffers accepted buyouts than expected (run for the exits!), at least some of the expiring posts will be refilled — with younger, cheaper, and more easily molded minions.
Steven Levy, a 12-year veteran tech columnist at Newsweek, a magazine we never pick up, is leaving to join join Wired, a magazine we never tear from its polybag. [Romenesko]
We spent all day yesterday waiting for The New Republic’s article on the Times’s article on John McCain.
And today we spent all day waiting for the New York Times to defend itself on the article.
If it weren’t for John McCain and the New York Times, we would just be thinking of the meaningless of life. If God exists, surely he’s behind this entertaining mini-scandal.
The Times answers are exactly what you’d expect. In short, they’re happy with the piece.
• Bill Keller goes first. The basic question was “What the fuck were you thinking publishing the story?” Keller’s response: Hey, it’s a legitimate story! It’s part of our Long Series! Jack Shafer agreed! Case closed. CONTINUED »
At a recent lecture at Columbia, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham bristled at his magazine's dental office reputation:
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.
Look, if we knew how to improve Newsweek, we wouldn’t be working from home in our pajamas. But we can judge insightfully.
To put it simply, it comes out once a week: There’s nothing in Newsweek that’s actual news.
It’s not that weeklies are inherent failures. But successful ones, like the New Yorker, offer something that goes beyond news per se. They offer great writing or surprising stories. Even People, which is also standard dental office fare, has access to celebrities that surpasses its competitors.
Newsweek is caught in the unfortunate position of offering the same information reported the same way as daily papers that came out a week before.
Also, all those pharmaceutical ads remind people that they’re going to die, and no one wants that while waiting to see the doctor.
Newsweek, the magazine of dental offices and free trials, is thinking about moving south.
The magazine’s lease at its eponymous building on Broadway and 57th ends next year. The magazine is working on a lease at 100 Church Street, near the World Trade Center. Never forget.
Despite being in south Manhattan, that location is not hip at all. That area of Manhattan is actually worse than midtown. There are tourists and disgruntled city employees everywhere. Newsweek copy editors should fit right in.
Once a top adviser to the Bush administration, Karl Rove is now airing his agenda all by himself. He's lined up a Fox News gig, but his column in Newsweek is proving to be a prickly platform, too. And not because he's using it to play politics, which he is, but because he's going after the very magazine his article appears in.
Why then the media's recent fascination with the supposed demise of the Republican Party? What are the reasons given for why, at least when it comes to the Republicans, "the party's over," as NEWSWEEK recently pronounced? First, we are told the GOP nomination has not been won "fairly quickly," as in recent contests. This is a horrible misremembering of history.
DELUXE DANA Portfolio staffs up European "bureau" with the excellent Dana Thomas from Newsweek, where the fashion and culture scribe has been for 12 years. Along with her brand name, of course, comes the ire of the luxury world elite, thanks to her Louis Vuitton-bashing book Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. Just what a high-brow business glossy needs: the wrath of pissed off possible advertisers.
Richard Smith will be stepping down from his role as the most powerful man at Newsweek.
The editor-in-chief and chief executive is leaving pursue his charity work; he’ll keep his title as chairman of the magazine.
Newsweek exec Ann McDaniel will become managing director. In the role, she'll handle the business and editorial sides of the magazine, which could get awkward if Newsweek ever runs an investigation on big Pharma. Thomas Ascheim, former G.M. of Nickelodeon Television, will replace Smith as chief executive. No new E.I.C. will be named, which makes Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek, the top guy.
Word around the Newsweek office is that “he was extremely tall and knew everyone's name” and made a lot of good toasts, which is the most you can hope for in a leader.
Editorial Director
