With the announcement that Newsweek is planning to rethink itself to appeal to a smaller, more elite, but devoted, audience, two themes emerge that are worth considering:
1. Editor Jon Meacham has stated that “If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”
2. Editorially, Newsweek’s plan calls for moving in the direction of not just analysis and commentary, but an opinionated, prescriptive or offbeat take on events.
These are the two centerpieces for discussion as printed publications come to terms with the reality that they have lost the “time advantage” for breaking news to digital/online platforms. Newsweek will capitalize on its famous writers, those who have a following, and who write essays more so than articles.
This is a giant step, and one already taken by one of my favorite magazines, The Economist, where starting on the cover one gets a point of view, and nobody is offended by it. Objective journalism, in this case, is more about the accuracy and fairness of the piece, and NOT necessarily in keeping viewpoints out of the mix. Even captions under photos in this smartest of weekly magazines convey a point of view. Take, for example, the one under a photo of Caroline Kennedy, accompanying a story about her unsuccessful try for a Senate seat: Not sweet enough, Caroline.
The first point about NOT saying anything if one does not have something original to say is one that will cause the greatest pain for traditional journalists at Newsweek—-and elsewhere—-to accept.
It is obvious already, that many daily newspapers DON”T add any value to a tremendous number of the “news” stories they print daily. Editors simply include them on the pages of their newspapers under the veil of “reaffirmation news”. However, I believe strongly that newspapers that survive—-and many will—-are going to be those whose editors embrace this mantra of “if we cannot enhance it through our reporting, offer something new, then we devote the space to something else, where we might do that”.
Indeed, a different kind of newspaper. For Newsweek, a radically different approach. One worth pursuing.
For the complete New York Times article about Newsweek’s changes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/business/media/09newsweek.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
To read TheRodrigoFino blog, in Spanish, go:
https://garciamedia.com/latinamerica/blog/
Today Rodrigo Fino writes about the challenges of publishing in the midst of convergence:
TheMarioBlog posting #188