Cover Stories

When I was in the Peace Corps we all got free subscriptions to Newsweek Europe. Since we were desperate for reading material in English I read it all cover to cover each week. It was crap, full of advertorials and the like. But it was so much superior to the Newsweek back in the US that it was really quite sad.

Why does Newsweek hate Americans?

I second John Emerson’s question.

What about those religiously-themed covers that Newsweek seems to run (in the US) about every six months or so (Science Finds God; Who Really Killed Jesus?)? Do they use those covers for the European, Asian and Latin American markets?

:-)

I think the “paranoid” “Newsweek doesn’t want to give Americans bad news on Afghanistan for political reasons” model makes more sense than the “Newsweek thinks Americans are dumb” model, not that they are mutually exclusive. First of all, it is not intrinsically dumb to do a cover story on Annie Leibowitz – the arts are a legitimate topic – and secondly, the Afghan cover would sell probably more magazines, since, in the current media climate, it is more shocking, and many more Americans have heard of Afghanistan than Leibowitz. They are more manipulating than pandering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Graham
Katharine Graham, the owner of Newsweek, made a speech at the CIA headquarters in 1988 and said this:

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.

Bad Jim — well, maybe it’d be news to Joe Lieberman…

Same problem as CNN within and outside the US.

To 14: Its probably good timing with the Afghanistan cover, its likely to get progressively worse there in the next months now the second front for the Taliban and their allies in northern Pakistan has been resolved.

in response to fred lapides, isn’t it the point of half the `folks’ making comments that Newsweek feels that people in the rest of the world are interested in world wide news whereas people in the US seem to be very inward-looking. So Newsweek’s marketing is a symptom of the dumbed-down head-in-the sand approach of the US public – which of course is worrying as they collectively exercise so much violent power worldwide.

The marketing approach contradicts martin bentos’ comment – martin: why would Newsweek do something which would curb their sales?

I’ve seen this on other blogs, and some people seem to be defending Newsweek on the grounds of well, they are just giving their readers what they want.

Free-market fanaticism. If truth is a commodity, democracy is impossible and attempts at democracy are probably undesirable, and those who can afford truth will hoard it and delight in the fatal ignorance of their inferiors.

I think that the Graham family strongly intends to put out a dishonest newspaper — I think that DeLong agrees with me by now. (The Sulzberger family seems slightly more ambivalent on this topic).

I think that Bento is right about the motives.

International readers are of a different class than doemestic readers, probably.

Jim – Newsweek’s on news stands in Europe, Latin America and Asia too. Or are consumers there too sophisticated to be swayed by a pretty cover?

I think it’s plausible that there’s a lot higher newsstand sales-to-subscription ratio of Newsweek in the U.S. than there is outside the country, where newsstands are more likely to be taken up by local magazines.

This would also explain why the US edition of The Economist has a gloomy-looking cover with the headline “The Dark Side of Debt: Why It Matters That Markets Are Going Private”, while the UK edition has a picture of Posh and Becks snogging. Oh wait, I guess the Economist doesn’t do that.

I think John Emerson (@24) is right on: the US readership is not dumber; it’s broader. The international readership for Newsweek is internationally focussed, the domestic readership comprises a much broader spectrum of society.

Call me a Pollyanna, but it’s probably a Good Thing that one magazine can reach people interested in both topics, that someone will pick up a magazine to see who the next generation of American women leaders (last week’s cover wasn’t just babes on glossy paper!) are and read an article about China, or the like.

The fact that they talk about losing Afghanistan to an American readership (if not on the cover) is a Good Thing, too.

Tim McG is a Pollyanna.

Oh, that’s embarrassing. The marketing people do have the US pegged as shallow, shallower, and shallowest, don’t they? Wny, way down deep we’re just… shallow.

Bad Jim, what basis do you have for the assertion that US subscribers are getting the international rather than US covers? Seems like something that would get noticed and discussed, if so.

As for why Newsweek would be willing to sacrifice its own sales in pursuit of an agenda, Newsweek and its parent corporation, MSNBC, have more than one interest, and the moderate weekly fluctuations of Newsweek sales are not necessarily the prevailing interest. Consider how much money the major figures in MSNBC have saved in tax cuts since the Republicans took power, and contrast that with the modest losses that they may have realized by downplaying stories embarassing to Republicans. Consider also what they have gotten and can expect to get in terms of media deregulation. True, Clinton was also onboard for that last (damn him!), but it was a page stolen from the Republicans, and to pass it he had to side with the Republican Congress against his own party. And the Republicans have just recently made noise about further deregulation. No one in media on a serious level is naive about the effect of the media.

The very real and mostly accurate cycnical assessment of corporate media decision-making – that it’s all about the bottom line and has nothing to do with anything resembling the responsibilities of the fifth estate – too often leaves out the correlative aspects.
Obviously these are smart guys. Obviously a concern for the bottom line that’s too myopic becomes dysfunctional and works against its own long-term greedy interest, so preservation of the system wherein that bottom line gets met is an attribute of corporate greed.
Revolution as an assault on the preciosity of the bottom line.
And, once the system’s depravity’s become intrinsic, even something as benign as the pursuit of basic human rights will be seen as an attack on the sanctity of profit-and-law.
As m. bento said – “No one in media on a serious level is naive about the effect of the media.”
The media elected Bush, and it will elect his successor, if any. But the media is no more the problem than Bush himself is.

Newsweek’s on news stands in Europe, Latin America and Asia too. Or are consumers there too sophisticated to be swayed by a pretty cover?

It’s the CNN/CNN International distinction, as john emerson notes. People watching CNN abroad fit into a different demographic to those watching at home: they’re businesspeople, expats, etc. I can’t see any market for Newsweek abroad other than to American business and expat types, or perhaps — just perhaps — those with an interest in American news. (Then again, I only ever read newsweeklies in doctors’ offices.)

Still, it reminds me that it took about a week of my first trip to the US to realise that any ignorance towards the world was driven by the media gatekeepers. As Jon Stewart pointed out, even the Liebowitz story was given the typical newsweekly ‘don’t scare the masses’ treatment, glossing over her relationship with Susan Sontag.

Oh wait, I guess the Economist doesn’t do that.

Actually, it often does have different covers in the UK and US. Though not necessarily Posh & Becks.