Goodbye, Good Riddance, But Good Luck!

You may have heard that Newsweek magazine has decided to reinvent itself in a very different format.

This is long overdue. Back in 2000, the Czar won a free subscription to Newsweek, having not read it since the 1980s. He was shocked by the first issue in that year-long subscription.

The magazine had changed. Liberal leaning? Undoubtedly, although the leaning was more of a full tilt. Simply giving George Will a three-column page in the back was hardly balance, particularly when the rest of the magazine was badly dumbed-down summaries of news stories well covered in other media days before.

Listen, the Czar understands that a weekly news periodical is tough: by the time the issue shows up on door steps, the story is dramatically evolved. But back in the 1980s, they solved that problem by spending 2-3 pages giving you the background on the major players, and a little bit of information on the minor players. The Newsweek of 2000-2009 no longer did this: it have a five-to-six-page photo spread on a news story (more photos than text), and a bunch of pages of pop culture and movie-tie-in articles, followed by as many photos and articles about Hollywood celebrities (whom we all know the Czar hates), what they’re doing, whom they are dating, where they eat lunch, and what fashion trends they follow. And a George Will page.

The Czar stopped reading Newsweek after a month, even though it generally took less than five minutes to flip through. At the end of the year, he did not elect to renew the subscription, nor forward it to anyone else.

Small wonder its readership collapsed in the last couple of years. It is always tough when your readership is vastly smarter than your editorial staff, eh?

With the announcement that Newsweek would reinvent itself into a printed blog, basically, with allegedly no particular political leaning but a frank opinionated reporting of the news and events by featured writers—well, now, that might be worth reading.

Or, you could get that for free right here at the Big G, www.gormogons.com! This is certainly what the Czar will do, but he might just, you know, check Newsweek out. A bit.