Newsweek's Survival Strategy. Bonus: Iowahawk, Colbert

Newspapers all over the country and venerable weekly news magazines like TIME and Newsweek are suffering financially. Some of their problems are due to competition from the New Media and the "personality" rags. Some of their problems are self-inflicted. They don't have enough "meat" for a serious weekly, and they're not flashy or gossipy enough to compete with "People" et al. They don't fit the interests of the American populace as well as they used to, up to about the time when Dennis Prager, still in high school, remembers stores in NYC devoted primarily to customers interested in a wide range of serious journals and competing newspapers. Many of these customers had never attended college. Something changed in the 1960s. Newspapers and magazines, already weakened by television and societal changes, really began to struggle later, as more and more people started turning to the internet for news and analysis.

Newsweek's editor, John Meacham, has decided that the way for Newsweek to survive is to become a serious political journal again. He realizes that subscriptions will be seriously reduced, but he wishes to focus on a serious core audience. Jim Geraghty compares Newsweek with The Economist, the journal most admired by Mr. Meacham. As I recall, The Economist was first recommended to me when I worked in So Cal by a visiting Irish colleague or by a Hungarian colleague who spoke 7 or 8 languages. I found The Economist to be very worthwhile. Though I never bought it. I either read our department's copy or the company library's copy. I used to enjoy reading TIME sometimes, a really long time ago, but it's changed. I don't remember ever being particularly excited about Newsweek. Though some of the columns, by George Will et al, were good.

Here, Iowahawk channels a three-week-old copy of Newsweek. Too good.

UPDATE: Was Newsweek stung a little by Iowahawk's piece? They've engaged another satirist, Stephen Colbert, as their guest editor for the next edition. That will convince people that they're a serious journal.