Newsweek Wants Serious Journalism?
When Editor John Meacham announced the revamp of Newsweek a few weeks ago, he basically said that the goal was to become the American version of Economist magazine. Do a search for Economist in my archives and you'll know that it's a magazine near and dear to me. I was a bit skeptical of the ability of Newsweek to transform itself. There are few magazines like the Economist for a reason. Even though the newspaper (as they call themselves) has been around for 150 years and is hugely successful, most imitators flounder. I'm thinking that Newsweek isn't going to make it. They want to be the American voice of serious news journalism with a dash of opinion thrown in.
How do they show it? By letting a fake news guy take over the magazine for a week. I've triple checked the calendar and it's not April. It's not the Onion reporting the story either. I keep wanting this to be satire, but I'm not sure it is.
While it's made me mention the magazine, it surely won't make me associate it with serious journalism.
