Why I Don't Care About Getting Newsweek From the P.O.
I have a free subscription to Newsweek from my public radio station membership, so although I don't really pay much attention to them the latest issues arrive in my mailbox on a more or less weekly basis.
This week, which as you've probably noticed has been defined news-wise by a continuing flare-up of violence in the Middle East, the magazine's cover is devoted to Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie. To be fair, Newsweek did devote last week's cover to the Israel-Lebanon conflict, but this still seems emblematic of why I can't really put up with reading the magazine anymore. Something about focusing on the imaginary version of recent events rather than the real-life version of extremely current events. Especially given how said recent event (or imagination-fueled interpretations of it) shapes our government's policy, such as it is, towards what's going on right now. Something about an apparent lack of intellectual seriousness.
This week, which as you've probably noticed has been defined news-wise by a continuing flare-up of violence in the Middle East, the magazine's cover is devoted to Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie. To be fair, Newsweek did devote last week's cover to the Israel-Lebanon conflict, but this still seems emblematic of why I can't really put up with reading the magazine anymore. Something about focusing on the imaginary version of recent events rather than the real-life version of extremely current events. Especially given how said recent event (or imagination-fueled interpretations of it) shapes our government's policy, such as it is, towards what's going on right now. Something about an apparent lack of intellectual seriousness.
2 Comments:
Yeah, I gave up on Newsweek years ago, realizing what utter horseshit it and other news magazines are. The only magazine subscription that strikes me as worthwhile is Nature.
If you wanted to be an optimistic gadfly, you could argue that many people would buy the Movie Cover magazine, but would not buy an Actual News Cover magazine. So maybe they would end up consuming Actual News on the inside of the Movie Cover magazine, whereas they would have consumed no Actual News if the magazine ran an Actual News cover.
Of course, consuming Actual News is not too useful if you're subtly told that it's less important than Movie News, and subtly told moreover that your priorities are correct. So I don't believe this argument.
News is a market commodity, and people buy what makes them feel good, i.e. what they want to hear. I don't think you can get around this.
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