You would be surprised at which of the two pictured magazines is the more useful and informative. (Well, maybe not if you have either read my previous posts or are amongst the diminishing few to actually bother to read Newsweek.) Let's cut to the chase: your baby is not racist. A sociopath, probably. A racist, nah.
I used to like Newsweek. I liked it far better than Time. Time always acted like it was the stuff--like once it said something, that was it. "We and perhaps the New York Times determine everything that is anything, thank you." Newsweek always had fairly much the same content, but it seemed somehow less full of itself. Newsweek had also made it a point to put in more continuing departments and had an interesting line up of commentators. It is from this emphasis on departmentalization that Newsweek started its fast and furious plunge.
First, essentially Time copied it. There isn't a department that was in Newsweek that didn't find itself cloned in Time. That somewhat sucked the piss out of whatever special identity Newsweek had. Second, Newsweek really couldn't compete on the feature stories and special coverage. Time Warner has much more going for it (CNN, other magazines) than the Washington Post does. So Newsweek's next tact was to meld the lead story with their fleet of commentators and departments. It turned the magazine into a news sit com. A different situation presents itself each week and all of the characters (the departments and essay people) all then react to it. It seemed to be working in its own demented little way.
Then the ad slump hit along with paper price increases and the rise of the interthingy--and now a big shake out is underway in all of magazine land. Time will never go under, even if it doesn't do well. Time Warner can afford to keep it going for prestige value and the reflected glow of its trademark which can be used to hawk books, movies and half baked CNN shows. US News & World Report has been essentially a vanity press for twenty-five years or so. Only poor Newsweek has to make money or it's a goner.
The powers that be at Newsweek have absolutely no imagination. You could do a version of People, only about people who actually matter. You could focus more on international events. You could do some real digging in the science and medical beat, be a mainstream version of Science News. You could do a plausible version of Popular Mechanics. You could muckrake like Mother Jones. Imagine features on Washington lobbyists. "Who Owns Your Local Congressmen." Or on corruption in Big City governments across the nation. "The Rotten Apples--the state of corruption in our 50 biggest cities." Add some consumer advocacy and mix to taste and you would have something.
And it's not like it isn't being done. I switched to The Economist some time ago for just these reasons, But The Economist is too international for the average commuter reader. There's still plenty of niche room between it and just what's on my Yahoo headlines every day.
Instead, Newsweek had gone teaser tab. Not quite a real tabloid, but rather 15 departments and essay people doing a take on some faked up revelation. And then they spritz in some B list celeb types for padding. It's a shame. After this pulp phase, they may wind up looking like US Magazine.
Why they would want to go tabloid at a time when the tabloids are suffering is beyond me. The tabs have been beaten up by a new form of magazine, led by People, which is to the tabloids what the sweats were to the pulps. Same stuff on different paper with a whole lot more celebs and checkbook journalism going on. This has left the company that owns all of the national tabloids, American Media, sucking wind for a strategy.
As I detailed at the end of Real Nazi Sex UFO Man-Eater Cults (available on Hil-Gle.com), American Media (owner of the National Enquirer, Globe, the National Examiner and the Sun)initially decided to chase ad dollars by sending the Star into Sweat Tab Land to compete as a magazine alongside US and People. The results have been pretty mixed. Playing nice and celeb friendly to suck up People's considerable backwash has been done largely at the expense of the National Enquirer, which without venom doesn't have much going for it.
With ad dollars now drying up no matter how nice you play, American Media seems to be reexamining its tabloid offerings. The neat thing about Tabloids is that they don't have advertising revenues to begin with. All your money comes from the readers so you can be beholding to none. They haven't quite put the fangs back in the Enquirer yet, but I have a feeling that it is coming. The first glimpse of a revival can be seen with the new revamp of The Sun.
The Sun isn't exactly the lowest hanging fruit in American Media's pulp basket. That would be the almost identity free National Examiner, which has been toddling along for the past decade as a geriatric version of People. But The Sun sort of lost its way at about the time the Star entered American Media's fold. It had become the celeb news that didn't quite fit into the Star.
The Sun has an odd ball history. It had been launched by the Globe as a competitor for the Weekly World News. The Weekly World News had been spawned by the National Enquirer not out of any response to a need for giant vampire baby coverage, but rather because the Enquirer had a perfectly good black and white press that it wasn't running anything off of. The mandate for the Weekly World News was that it not cost the publisher much more money than it took to print and compose the thing. In short, the Weekly World News had no real budget.
No celebs. Don't get us sued. After that, the publisher didn't care what was in it. So the staff at the Weekly World News just started making things up. It became became the world's weirdest creative writing project, sort of a short form version of what the men's adventure magazines had been during the 40s, 50s and 60s. In its relatively short heyday the Weekly World News attracted something of a cult following. Mike Royko said it was the only paper he read when he was on vacation. It seemed every conservative commentator on radio made mention of the thing, even often going so far as to cite the paper's own fake over the top conservative commentator Ed Anger.
The Weekly World News was probably more heat than light. Once the Globe, the Star and the Enquirer merged operations. it occurred to the people who gave American Media its merger money that neither the Weekly World News nor its slightly more goofy all color clone The Sun were exactly cash cows. So they zip gunned the Weekly World News.
Interest in the Weekly World News has been growing since its demise. There was talk of it being purchased by fans of the paper. A fan website was set up, to continue in its vein. For various reasons, I think American Media decided to hold onto the trademark.
I am not entirely sure what the arrangement exactly is, but the Weekly World News is back--this time as a non pull out pull out section of The Sun. As for The Sun, it's back to being zany. In the revamped issue (pictured) it contained sections with prophecies which directly contradicted each other. (The Sun was always big on the end of the world stuff, in contrast with the Weekly World News' emphasis on monsters.) Other than the lack of color, it is a little unclear where the Sun starts and stops and starts and what part of the paper is the Weekly World News, but this is to be expected given that The Sun is an imitation of the Weekly World News in the first place. All said, it's off to a neat new start. Of special note is the Weekly World News' section (no page numbers for WWN) entitled 'Is your neighbor an Al Qaeda agent?'. Back in The Sun section of The Sun on page 9 was a helpful feature entitled "WHAT TO DO WHEN ZOMBIES ATTACK!" containing this nifty admonition "The most effective way to contain the rise of the undead is to hit hard and hit often."
Right now The Sun seems a little garbled, having dedicated itself to physic prophecies, medical breakthroughs, celebrity scandals, delightful animal photos and puzzles, but I am sure that it will gain focus. (Hey! Don't try to do too much. You have five other tabloids.) One can only hope that this is the start of a revival in the entire American Media line. If you can't sell ads, you can still make money by selling entertaining reading material. Maybe Newsweek might want to try it!
No comments:
Post a Comment