The American Spectator : News of the Weak

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News of the Weak

By William Murchison from the September 2009 issue

Last May venerable Newsweek gave itself a journalistic Botox job. Is it any prettier?

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The First Amendment is the first amendment because, aside from affirming the right to worship, it protects the right of expression, which latter right keeps our political keepers at least halfway honest. Most of us old-time newsies are free speech people because we think people are capable of sorting out claims and counter-claims (if sometimes belatedly, as we may be realizing with respect to the Obama policies), then judging more or less rightly.

A seriousness-even a semi-seriousness-about "news" is among the prerequisites for intelligent -- or semi-intelligent -- participation in public affairs. With a certain reluctance, therefore, one acknowledges that an often one-sided, and that side liberal, publication like Newsweek has a part to play in the national dialogue; further, that its own diminishment of that role, its newfound zest for looking over Oprah Winfrey's shoulder, doesn't enlarge the possibilities for sifting and sorting out large political and philosophical claims.

You can exit a discussion such as this one with a pretty low impression of American culture -- and maybe you should. Is the decline of the old print media all about the ascent of new communications tools, with all their Twitters and tweets? One could suggest as much, but that assertion needs qualification. None of this stuff just happened overnight. When People magazine becomes the cash cow on the old Luce domain, one deduces there's a lot less interest in "hard news" than high-minded editors sometimes like to pretend. The ascendancy of People occurred years ago, and things have only gotten worse, as evidenced by, not least, the growth of a whole industry of People imitators.

The merger of entertainment and "news" in the pages of the new Newsweek isn't especially edifying, but an air of financial inevitability surrounds it. Meacham reasons thus: We can be highbrow and serious and civic-minded as all get-out and go broke. Alternatively, we can talk about Suzanne Somers and thrive. He's probably got it about right. Which raises the question of what schools are doing to raise tastes and arouse a thirst race for serious -- I said serious -- knowledge. A whole lot less, seemingly, than they did when Newsweek and Time were in their heydays. That's clearly a topic for another day, but it's hard to leave off a disquisition like this one without observing that what the culture wants, the culture generally gets. It seems no longer to want in high degree the kind of information it used to regard as essential.

As I write, the world revels -- revels -- in the aftershocks of the Michael Jackson funeral. The media just couldn't serve up enough of it to us. Yes, Newsweek was there, with a cover story about the late "transracial icon." "We'd never seen anyone like this before...and we won't forget him -- until the big Neverland swallows us all." That's a story the new Newsweek seems gorgeously qualified to tell, if there's anyone around to listen and understand.

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About the Author

William Murchison, a Dallas-based columnist for Creators Syndicate and author of Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity (Encounter Books), is completing a biography of John Dickinson..

Letter to the Editor View all comments (18) | Leave a comment

Appleby| 9.18.09 @ 7:39AM

Is that guy who wrote the Greening of America back in the 1970s still alive? I have a copy of his book from a yard sale somewhere, and I recall it was filled with the kind of silliness that leads to the Newsweek type attempts to gambol with TheKids -- as any Kid will tell you, this inevitably causes the gamboleer to look foolish to no good purpose, whether he knows it or not. (When the gamboleer is female, the British term Mutton Dressed As Lamb applies).

The question I keep asking is, Why, in the face of the truth that the average age in America is now 40, not 14, why is America still dancing around the 14-20 demographic to the utter exclusion of all sane and educated 40+ people who actually dominate the country now?

Jack Olson| 9.18.09 @ 8:11AM

Murchison's best comment was his comparison of the new Newsweek to People Magazine. Isn't that what Newsweek has turned into? I'll have to rely on other people to answer that question since I only read Newsweek when it's the last magazine left in the doctor's waiting room.

Cuban Pete| 9.18.09 @ 4:42PM

You and me both,Jack.
Have a great weekend.

Howard| 9.18.09 @ 8:28AM

I was never a big Newsweek fan, even during the 1960's-12970's. The gamut of weekly news magazines were important back then. They were basically middle of the road. Now they are all liberal and shill for the Democrats. I can't believe this guy paid $6.00 for a copy of that turd.

Alan Brooks| 9.18.09 @ 9:07AM

if Newsweek should publish nothing but George Will's pieces, it would be a better magazine..

Darin| 9.18.09 @ 9:54AM

I used to get Newsweek but dropped it some time back. They've become Obamaweek, and the stories almost all have a very liberal spin. It's just ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN in print form. So I'm spending my money elsewhere.

Beer for My Horses| 9.18.09 @ 10:00AM

At least it still publishes George Will every other week.

Nick| 9.18.09 @ 10:01AM

I don't think this is a new occurence.

As a prepubescent boy in the mid-'70s, I brought the Time magazine cover with "Charlie's Angels" on it to school for weeks, until my "friend" stole it. (He ruined it too, cut Farrah out of it. I stole it back though, ha!)

True, that was probably an exception back then. I was only 9, I didn't read the articles. But it did happen.

J.C.Eaton| 9.18.09 @ 3:12PM

Thank you, Mr. Murchison for a thoughtful, provocative little essay. I don't begrudge Wa-Po their $6, if they can shake you down for it. But you got gypped and of course, know it.I don't begrudege it because: it was YOU who paid it, not I, andbecause it will be among the last, relatively speaking, $6 they'll ever get. Mags like this one are at the end of the trail I'd trow. They suffer for their utter one-sidedness[it doesn't change the overall result to put the occasional good Will offering on its soft pink pages]. But more, they're torpid, ostensibly reporting "in depth" witlessness on topics that have used up their shelf-life of interest days, weeks, sometimes months before. I've heard many times that the determining quality that successful pubs of the future, be they print or on-line, must offer is CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT! Not only is Newsweek not any good...it's not any good slowly. Best,

Margie| 9.18.09 @ 4:25PM

I like how you write, Mr. Murchison.

Here's what I think, for what it's worth. I think Newsweek's going soft won't be soft enough. The 'yewts' of today that they're aiming for, don't want a little entertainment mixed in with their news. They want ALL entertainment, all the time! Mark my words. ;^)

Ken (Old Texican)| 9.18.09 @ 7:23PM

I read part of a Newsweek awhile back...in a dentist's office. I was simply embarrassed.
Every article was simply a liberal orgasm...looking in a mirror.
Yech!

Bohemond| 9.18.09 @ 7:55PM

I think that one reason the dead-tree media are dying, or trying to take the People route, is because they no longer have any credibility as organs of "serious, high-minded" discussion. A Pew survey yesterday revealed that nearly three-quarters of Americans do not trust the press to report the news accurately or fairly. Why should anyone shell out for Newsweek or Time when they know that they are not buying information, but partisan spin?

Credibility and reputation are all a news organization has; and once prostituted, nearly impossible to recover.

Motown Mike| 9.19.09 @ 7:41AM

There's no truth to the claim that we've entered the era of painless dentistry. About the only time I read Newsweek is at the dentist's office and it hurts -- hurts! -- to read a magazine that is so bad.

Michael L. Hauschild| 9.19.09 @ 1:41PM

First, how in the hell would anyone with any sense know if Newsweak ( that was not a typo) was made over or not, and second, how could a by line by George Will be a positive attribute?

Jim| 9.25.09 @ 9:19PM

Unfortunately, the salient point made by this article, even if indirectly, is the declining intellect of the American public generally. I honestly believe that the education my dad received before he was yanked out of eighth grade to work on the family farm, was better than most people who have doctoral degrees today. I can remember him reading newspapers and magazines at the kitchen table, and he had a greater understanding of the going ons in the world than most people today. That was in the days before the print media was dumbed down to about a fourth grade level.

Ordinary people cared about the news (not celebrities), and were much more knowledgeable about politics and current affairs. Today kids are taught about women's studies and how to feel good. If some of them happen to learn to read and write and think, it's purely accidental.

Caro| 10.10.09 @ 11:31AM

Hi Jim,
Something in your comment rankles -
the part about "today's kids".
I would consider myself an "ordinary" person - I have my own business, work very hard, don't pay too much attention to celebrities, and care about the news and world going ons. The balance of young and heedless with older, wiser, saner is a great learning experience - provided we try to communicate with each other and continue to learn as well as teach while we grow up- supposed to make a better world.
So I do know how to read and write, thank you very much - and whatever "women's studies" are - I wish I had them in school, I probably would have benefitted from them.

Fred Dodsworth| 10.10.09 @ 11:50AM

Like the reader response to Mr. Murchison's commentary on Newsweek magazine, today's media-mix is fractured into competing hard-held ideologies and segments. The modern publisher's tactical error is not in dedicating one's efforts to serving a segment of that market, so much as in fantasizing that any one media vehicle could actually serve all of the market.

When Mr. Luce first published, the universe of readers was small indeed. The population of the US has tripled since 1940, literacy rates have skyrocketed, and the professional mix of Americans has changed beyond recognition. Mainly White Christian Dads working in major urban centers or professional fields in the outlaying smaller cities were interested in news of the (predominantly business) world of the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. That was a great market and it was available to its targeted readers at a reasonable price which resulted in Mr. Luce's tremendous success. To compare those days with these is to draw deeply on the opium pipe dream of unrealistic fantasy scenarios.

Today we have women in major positions of authority. Today we have an ethnically diverse community with separate language, religious and cultural expectations. Today we have young people with pockets full of change and an eager desire to learn more about their heroes and the products geared to their tastes. Many of these young people are often also business managers and leaders. To assume that any of these groups shares enough in common values and beliefs to subscribe to one dominant publication is to mercilessly delude oneself, not that most publishers aren't trying desperately to do exactly that, which has inevitably led to so much failure in the media business.

The problem is not with the market, it's a great market. The problem is and will always be with those who are incapable of responding to their times and situations. Mr. Murchinson is such a person.

Joe| 5.9.11 @ 4:19PM

Sounds like Newsweek was only successful in taking itself out of the competition with time and making a new niche... perhaps a competition of Mad magazine.
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