Newsweek Goes Tits Up. With Newt Gingrich's Tits. Or, Why Print Is Dying, But Not Fast Enough.
If anyone still wonders why 20-century newsmagazines are facing an uncertain future, gaze up this cover of the latest issue of Newsweek, which has played Alain Mamoun to Time's Emil Zatopek from the earliest days of its existence.
Unless there's a $100 taped inside, who the hell is going to open this magazine?
As a former print mag editor who published quite possibly the worst cover in history (that would be this one, IMO) and at least one very good one (here!), I know how freaking impossible it is to hit even a slap single every time you come up to the plate. But this craptacular image proceeds directly from the lackluster imagination of the story and coverage angle of the story it illustrates as well.
And that's the real reason Newsweek has been an also-ran going back to the days when it was covering Wendell Wilkie. It has rarely if ever added anything to the conventional wisdom perpetrated by Time and other bastions of generally boring obviousness.
Good luck, Newsweek, you're going to need it in a future that is less and less beholden to lumbering sources of yesterday's news.