Howard Kurtz interviews Jon Mecham of Newsweek and Rick Stengel of Time. Both magazines have been--shall we say--struggling of late. They're strategy for survival is interesting if not a clear hail Mary.
Stengel says his goal is to "make Time lead the conversation, not follow it. To speak stronger with a point of view. To mix more analysis with reporting. Not to ask questions, but to answer them on the cover" -- as with this week's story, "Why Israel Can't Win."
Does that sound like a blog to you? It does to me.
I suppose they'll keep hacking away at it as long as they can, but to understand the decline of Time and Newsweek, one just has to spend a little time in the blogosphere.
There is lots of political discussions on both wings of the blogosphere, but very little of it is what you could term a "serious policy debate". How do you debate policy when by and large, the right and left consider the debate over and done with?
Both magazines are trying to make it as printed blogs, but without the elements that makes Huffington Post and Daily Kos successful. The left doesn't want to receive the wisdom of Time and Newsweek's marquee pundits--they simply want to vent, to witness to a chorus of amens and hallelujahs. The people want low church, Time and Newsweek want high church, silent penitents observing the ritual mass.
Both magazines have moved away from the health and pop culture covers that were so prevalent in the past. Time ran 19 cover stories on politics last year, others on war, the economy and foreign affairs, and exactly one on a movie star, George Clooney. Time served up such titles as "How Wall Street Sold Out America," "21 Ways to Fix Up America" and "How to Fix America's Schools."
While the Mecham and Stengel might think this is "finger of God writing the tablets of stone" type of stuff, its actually conventional liberal-left tripe we've been hearing for decades. The newsmags are facing the Frost-Nixon/Valley of Elah reality--the people that agree with you would rather watch porn and listen to Howard Stern, and the people who disagree with you aren't going to pay to be harangued.
Time and Newsweek might want to recall an old axiom--"only Nixon could go to China". This particular piece of political wisdom was before my time as well, but I study history. For you younger folks it simply meant that Richard Nixon's cold warrior credibility provided the public trust for him to engage Communist China without fear of being labeled an appeaser.
Rick Stengel:
We are arguably the best-known news brand in the world, and we want to leverage that."
Stengel has a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of "brand". That "Time" is well-known is indisputable, but well-known for what? Brands have associations along with fame. If I open a white linen restaurant and name it "McDonalds", am I really doing myself any favors? Sure--the name is famous, but the association is of course all wrong. When I was a kid, "Bell & Howell" was a very well-known brand. Established in 1907, every school had several Bell & Howell 16mm film projectors (before VCRs and DVD players). Now they license their name to shavers, alarm systems and air ionizers. Its an echo for the 50+ set and totally meaningless for everyone else.
Time and Newsweek shavers anyone?
I'm not fond of criticism without a constructive component, so my suggestion, radical as it may be, is to take the Camille Paglia approach--tell the truth, let the chips fall where they may. People get mad at Camille, but they always read her because its never bullsh_t. She's a atheist lesbian who respects religion and thinks well of Sarah Palin. She is Howard Roark to the Ellsworth Toohey media universe.
It may be hard to find such writers, because they are almost certainly not among the famous, but the fresh air they will blow through the news magazine business will drive away the smell of death that pervades it now.
Its simply really--the scarce truth has value, the political correct commodity has none. With the right preacher--they'll come back to church.
