
Newsweek to Cease Print Publication at End of Year - brnstz
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/newsweek-will-cease-print-publication-at-end-of-year/
======
etrain
We subscribed to Newsweek throughout my childhood, even living overseas. I
recall excitedly going through it every time it arrived. As far as the news
digest format went, in those days they mixed topic areas fluidly, while
keeping their readers informed.

I canceled my personal subscription years ago. To me, the format changes had
made it less comprehensive, the quality of writing had declined, and it had
become too political. Or, maybe I'd just outgrown it.

Sure, they'll have a digital version, but they have far smaller staff (and
impact) than they once did. They're a marginally iconic publication, who were
unable to adapt to the new world, and are thus a victim of the changing
landscape of journalism.

~~~
jgfoot
Was the problem that they were "unable to adapt to the new world," or was the
problem that they editorially went off the deep end? Readers abandoned
Newsweek as Newsweek's quality declined. Perhaps the one drove the other--with
fewer readers, it was tougher to fund expensive journalism. But, from the
link: "Last November, she featured a cover story about sex addiction, and in
May President Obama was shown wearing a rainbow-colored halo with a headline
that read ”The First Gay President.”" The Internet didn't do that; Tina Brown
did.

~~~
jes5199
I agree.

There's some kind of blindspot with traditional media: people say "oh, they
couldn't handle the competition from the blogs" but that was only after
decades of reducing the local papers into skeleton crews - if your newspaper
is little more than a platform for syndicating Reuters stories verbatim then
yeah, you're asking to be disrupted.

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cschmidt
There was also speculation this week that the Guardian would go digital only.
That was denied by the Guardian Editor in Chief. However, @tomstandage, an
editor of the Economist tweeted:

    
    
        Claims Guardian will ditch print edition could be half right, 
        despite @arusbridger's denials; they could go weekly (as I expect NYT to) 
    

That would be quite a change. No more daily print New York Times, or Guardian.

~~~
nicholassmith
It'd definitely be a shame to see The Guardian go, I stopped reading around
the point where they started cutting big chunks of content out to get the
costs down, but I understand why they did it. Still use them as my primary
news source, although the quality has dropped some what in the past 6 months.

~~~
cschmidt
The Guardian is owned by a trust, intended to keep it going in perpetuity.
That should shield it from commercial pressure. However, the trust only has
finite resources, so it can't run at a loss forever.

I agree it is a shame.

~~~
mattmanser
I'm actually a bit worried about that to be honest.

At the moment we have the BBC and the Guardian, both completely shielded from
having to turn a profit. The BBC is fairly easy for the government to meddle
with, the Guardian is pretty extreme lefty.

It's very easy to forget as they have such a great website, but the Guardian
is an extremely biased paper. If you have the Daily Mail on the right the
Guardian occupies the same spot on the left.

I worry that these non-commercial, but well funded, enterprises are actually
not very healthy for the the long-term future of UK journalism.

~~~
freshhawk
What is your worry about removing the most significant conflict of interest
from a news organization exactly? It seems like it might cause other issues
but I can't think of a reasonable reason that it would do anything but reduce
the amount of bias present.

And really? The Daily Fucking Mail? First of all: middle ground fallacy.
Second: What sane person takes the Daily Mail's position on _anything_ as a
serious data point about where on the political spectrum a hypothetical
unbiased news source would lie.

I'm finding it difficult not to stereotype you as an american who feels the
middle ground between the Democrats and Republicans is a true middle ground
(and that reality therefore has a left wing bias).

~~~
mattmanser
I'm from the UK.

If you think the Guardian's not as far left as the Mail's far right you're
uninformed and need to read more. I suggest political theory and try reading
all the different broadsheets on the same day a few days to understand
political bias in each one.

Finally, go talk to some real people. If you think people don't have similar
political beliefs as the daily mail you're utterly deluding yourself.

I suggest people not in your age group. I have found most Daily Mail readers
in the 40-60s groups. It seems you have surrounded yourself with like-minded
people, nothing wrong with that, but now believe everyone thinks like you do.

The 'middle' that you claim to be inhabiting is probably actually far left.
There's a lot further right you can go than the Mail (like fascism for
example). Liberals do seem to make this mistake rather a lot, thinking they're
the moderate centre, when they're anything but.

I have no idea what you were getting at in your first sentence, sorry.

~~~
freshhawk
The first sentence was asking why you think non-commercial news sources would
be bad for journalism.

As to the rest, I think a lot of our disagreement comes from how we define the
middle and whether "moderate centre" can exist on it's own or only relative to
the local politics. There is a difference between philosophical differences in
political views about subjective or unknown issues and actual bias, where
ideological commitments result in irrational positions on subjects with real
evidence (roughly: denial of evolution/climate change is most often political
bias, differences in taxation policy or social safety net policy are most
often philosophical differences)

Also, I don't think I'm moderate centre or middle at all, nor am I just left.
My worldview is based on science, rationality and skepticism so on the scale
you are using I swing from centre to extreme left to fairly right depending on
the issue. Perhaps that's why I consider the single axis political spectrum to
be a framework for the ignorant and only useful to those writing the talking
points. I certainly consider The Economist to be more similar to The Guardian
than to the Daily Mail, which probably sounds crazy to you.

I understand you could read the different broadsheets to understand how their
politics differ but how do you translate that to bias? How have you decided
where the middle is other than averaging the broadsheets? That's textbook
middle ground fallacy. It's completely open to manipulation by shifts in the
Overton window.

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gavinlynch
I really think the company will suffer greatly during the transition. They are
no longer a unique product and frankly the quality of writing is negligible.
They are still a brand name, and that will help for a while, but in this
flattened world of competition that won't cut it.

Hopefully, for whomever is in charge, they can make the type of transition the
Atlantic started making years and years ago. But to be totally honest I doubt
it. They don't really have much to offer.

In my own personal news consumption, there is a stratification going on: For
every-day information, I'm 90% in the social media (mostly Twitter) camp. For
insightful analysis, I'm going to specialized publications such as the
Atlantic or the Economist. Not that I'm an expert on media, but I wonder if
that type of polarization will continue, with the guys and gals in-between
becoming dinosaurs.

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Alex3917
So now that it's going to be digital, will Americans still get a special
version designed for dumb people?

~~~
cpeterso
[citation needed]?

~~~
Alex3917
[http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/12/02/american-
vs-...](http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/12/02/american-vs-
international-news-time-and-newsweek/)

~~~
cpeterso
Thanks! Here is a similar comparison of CNN vs Al-Jazeera:

<http://wtfcnn.com/>

------
dmfdmf
Internet social revolution still in progress;
[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-
thinking...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-
unthinkable/)

------
SODaniel
Very melancholy morning realizing that the defining English language
publication of my childhood and early 20s is ceasing dead-tree production.

Makes me wish I had saved all the in-flight Newsweek's through the years.

~~~
davidw
My family used to get Newsweek when I was growing up, but even as a teenager I
wasn't very impressed with the quality of the writing.

It's been a while since I've had the chance to read them 'head to head', but
The Economist pretty much blows it out of the water.

~~~
pnathan
Same, it's been surface-level content for a loooong time.

I find Atlantic, Financial Times, CS Monitor far superior.

------
patrickgzill
It was a case of suicide, plain and simple. They wanted to spin things their
way and they were not interested in hard-hitting objective reporting.

"Want share? Try the truth!"

------
naner
Pretty bold. In the short-term they are going to lose a _lot_ of subscribers.

~~~
TheFuture
Bold? They're losing money like crazy. Advertisers haven't been paying the
rates they need to survive for almost a decade.

It was bold to keep printing and mailing the thing for the last 5 years as it
became absolutely clear that printing news on paper has no future at all.

I'm surprised that so many major daily newspapers are still being printed
today. That shoe is going to drop any month now.

