The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Jon Meacham’s $1 Legacy

Posted on | August 3, 2010 | 20 Comments

One dollar — that was the reported selling price of Newsweek, following Meacham’s disastrously pretentious “re-invention” of the magazine. Let’s see if we can figure out why that didn’t work:

To cite one obvious example: newsweeklies annually marked Christian holidays with a cover story on a religious theme, always respectful and sometimes celebratory in tone. . . . The new Newsweek, by contrast, published holiday issues that any good secular journalist would like to read. One issue near Christmas offered a long and fallacious cover story on “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage.” Easter came and the magazine feted “The End of Christian America.” Pieces like this weren’t so much a challenge to traditionally religious readers as a declaration of war. Why not just put a bullet in the Easter Bunny while you’re at it?

Then again, there was the infamous “Is Your Baby Racist?” cover story, an excerpt from the book Nurture Shock — a chapter titled “Why White Parents Don’t Talk About Race” — with the authors promising that “the piece is just beginning of our dialogue on race: we’ll be continuing the conversation with related posts on kids and race relations all this week. We’re very excited about this, and we can’t wait for you to join us.”

Apparently, readers were somewhat less excited about this “dialogue” and, whatever the value of the Nurture Shock blog to sales of the book, its value to Newsweek seems to have been negligible. This was typical of the self-indulgently unbusinesslike decisions that Meacham made. At a time when Internet competition is teaching news organizations everywhere the virtues of running “lean and mean,” Meacham maintained a full-time staff of more than 350.

Jeff Poor at Newsbusters observes that the self-indulgent editor’s self-indulgent publisher Donald Graham, in selling the magazine to the wealthy husband of Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), signified that he didn’t have a clue of what had gone wrong:

“Graham felt comfortable with Harman’s centrist politics, and was comforted by the idea of selling to a stalwart of the Washington establishment. . . . Harman is expected to preserve the serious-minded, essentially New-Democratic tone [outgoing Newsweek editor Jon] Meacham set for the magazine.”

Never mind the idiocy of this definition of “centrist politics.” What about the absurd notion that Newsweek needs “a stalwart of the Washington establishment” as its publisher? What about the dubious proposition that Meacham’s “serious-minded” approach is worth preserving? Does it never occur to these people that perhaps doing more of what caused the failure might lead to more failure?

At this historic moment, let’s not forget how the “serious-minded” Newsweek editors managed to blow Michael Isikoff’s exclusive on the Monica Lewinsky scandal:

At the last minute, at 6 p.m. on Saturday evening, NEWSWEEK magazine killed a story that was destined to shake official Washington to its foundation: A White House intern carried on a sexual affair with the President of the United States!
The DRUDGE REPORT has learned that reporter Michael Isikoff developed the story of his career, only to have it spiked by top NEWSWEEK suits hours before publication.

That’s the kind of stupidity it took to turn a once-important magazine into a $1 property. Ed Driscoll wonders “how much worse can it get?”

Category: Media Bias, Neutral Objective Journalism

Comments

20 Responses to “Jon Meacham’s $1 Legacy”

  1. BulletMagnetEd
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 10:06 am

    Michael Isikoff’s book “Uncovering Clinton” was a great book detailing the events around his story getting dropped in a deep dark hole 🙂

  2. BulletMagnetEd
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 10:06 am

    Michael Isikoff’s book “Uncovering Clinton” was a great book detailing the events around his story getting dropped in a deep dark hole 🙂

  3. BulletMagnetEd
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 6:06 am

    Michael Isikoff’s book “Uncovering Clinton” was a great book detailing the events around his story getting dropped in a deep dark hole 🙂

  4. Kojocaro
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 11:11 am

    Yes they are just like a hooker selling their services to anyone for $1……….and btw maobama has a lot of nerve to say republicans do not care about the children of americas future when he has saddled us with an excruciating amount of debt

  5. Kojocaro
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 11:11 am

    Yes they are just like a hooker selling their services to anyone for $1……….and btw maobama has a lot of nerve to say republicans do not care about the children of americas future when he has saddled us with an excruciating amount of debt

  6. Kojocaro
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 7:11 am

    Yes they are just like a hooker selling their services to anyone for $1……….and btw maobama has a lot of nerve to say republicans do not care about the children of americas future when he has saddled us with an excruciating amount of debt

  7. Virginia Right! News Hound for 8/3/2010 | Virginia Right!
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 7:22 am

    […] Jon Meacham’s $1 Legacy […]

  8. Raise Fareed Zakaria’s Taxes! : The Other McCain
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 10:19 am

    […] cuts is kinda lame.On the other hand, considering that he is the highly-paid foreign editor of a bankrupt magazine that just sold for $1, maybe Fareed Zakaria could get laid off and collect 99 weeks of unemployment compensation. And, as […]

  9. The WyBlog
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 12:26 pm

    Life imitates the movies, “Trading Places” at Newsweek…

    When I read that Newsweek sold for the princely sum of $1 I immediately thought of the penultimate scene from the movie Trading Places….

  10. The American Spectator : AmSpecBlog : Newsweek's Savior? The Man With No Plan
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 1:47 pm

    […] staffers are reportedly exultant that the $1 sale of their magazine to audio tycoon Sidney Harman (husband of California Democratic Rep. Jane Harman) comes with a […]

  11. Estragon
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 8:13 pm

    I smell a stockholders’ lawsuit coming – there were other, better offers on the table, but they either would not guarantee to keep most employees or might have – gasp! – taken the magazine in a “different direction” (than what? straight downhill?), so the lower Harman offer was chosen. Graham still has a fiduciary responsibility to his stockholders, and they should be fighting mad over this.

    Also, Mr. Harman may have been taken advantage of here. There is simply no business plan which allows a failing business to continue unchanged without bleeding oceans of cash. Staff cuts and a change in editorial policy, not necessarily to conservative but to somewhere in the general range of “sane” would help, are required immediately. I suspect his leftist wife conned a senile old man into this – the courts should appoint a guardian to keep her from spending all of his money on such frivolities.

    I suppose I should take heart in that any money spent keeping Newsweak afloat is money which cannot find its way into other, more dangerous leftist coffers.

  12. Estragon
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 8:13 pm

    I smell a stockholders’ lawsuit coming – there were other, better offers on the table, but they either would not guarantee to keep most employees or might have – gasp! – taken the magazine in a “different direction” (than what? straight downhill?), so the lower Harman offer was chosen. Graham still has a fiduciary responsibility to his stockholders, and they should be fighting mad over this.

    Also, Mr. Harman may have been taken advantage of here. There is simply no business plan which allows a failing business to continue unchanged without bleeding oceans of cash. Staff cuts and a change in editorial policy, not necessarily to conservative but to somewhere in the general range of “sane” would help, are required immediately. I suspect his leftist wife conned a senile old man into this – the courts should appoint a guardian to keep her from spending all of his money on such frivolities.

    I suppose I should take heart in that any money spent keeping Newsweak afloat is money which cannot find its way into other, more dangerous leftist coffers.

  13. Estragon
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 4:13 pm

    I smell a stockholders’ lawsuit coming – there were other, better offers on the table, but they either would not guarantee to keep most employees or might have – gasp! – taken the magazine in a “different direction” (than what? straight downhill?), so the lower Harman offer was chosen. Graham still has a fiduciary responsibility to his stockholders, and they should be fighting mad over this.

    Also, Mr. Harman may have been taken advantage of here. There is simply no business plan which allows a failing business to continue unchanged without bleeding oceans of cash. Staff cuts and a change in editorial policy, not necessarily to conservative but to somewhere in the general range of “sane” would help, are required immediately. I suspect his leftist wife conned a senile old man into this – the courts should appoint a guardian to keep her from spending all of his money on such frivolities.

    I suppose I should take heart in that any money spent keeping Newsweak afloat is money which cannot find its way into other, more dangerous leftist coffers.

  14. Old Grouch
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 11:02 pm

    Mr. Harman may have been taken advantage of here. There is simply no business plan which allows a failing business to continue unchanged without bleeding oceans of cash.

    At least Harman will be spending his own money. Look on the bright side: He could be giving it to the DNC.

  15. Old Grouch
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 11:02 pm

    Mr. Harman may have been taken advantage of here. There is simply no business plan which allows a failing business to continue unchanged without bleeding oceans of cash.

    At least Harman will be spending his own money. Look on the bright side: He could be giving it to the DNC.

  16. Old Grouch
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 7:02 pm

    Mr. Harman may have been taken advantage of here. There is simply no business plan which allows a failing business to continue unchanged without bleeding oceans of cash.

    At least Harman will be spending his own money. Look on the bright side: He could be giving it to the DNC.

  17. Kojocaro
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 11:43 pm

    😯 your right

  18. Kojocaro
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 11:43 pm

    😯 your right

  19. Kojocaro
    August 3rd, 2010 @ 7:43 pm

    😯 your right

  20. Ed Driscoll » Paranoia, Short-Term Thinking, and the Ongoing Media Death Spiral
    August 4th, 2010 @ 4:27 am

    […] began to decouple: “let’s not forget how the ’serious-minded’ Newsweek editors managed to blow Michael Isikoff’s exclusive on the Monica Lewinsky […]