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Rushmore commented on Betrayed by the Zeitgeist she once channeled, Tina Brown invokes it one last time

Haber's insights into the demise of Newsweek are excellent. People get their news from a variety of sources these days--mostly electronic and free--and certainly don't need to pay a subscription fee to a print magazine to have it filtered for them by the Michael Isikoffs, Michelle Goldbergs, Fareed Zakarias, and George Wills of the world. Call this trend the zeitgeist, or democratization, or whatever you prefer, but there's one piece Haber overlooked that may have been another key factor in Newsweek's decline. I subscribed to Newsweek for nearly 30 years but dropped my subscription a few years back because it seemed to me that the magazine was becoming more of a mouthpiece for liberal idealism than an objective news source. What finally pushed me over the edge was the "How do you Solve a Problem like Sarah?" cover that appeared in 2008. I'm not a fan of Sarah Palin, but that cover showed me exactly how manipulative, cheap, and sexist this once respectable magazine had become. Perhaps this is consistent with the proclivity for hype that Haber says Newsweek has always displayed, but to me it was a sign they were more interested in political propaganda and selling magazines than telling the truth.

Posted on December 24th, 2012 10:55am