Somehow I missed this a couple of months ago, but it’s still worth noting (in light of Roger L. Simon’s comment the other day).

You know things are really bad in MediaLand when Newsweek editor Jon Meacham has to try to convince j-school students that his magazine is better than The Economist, which they seem to prefer [e.a.]:

“And how to communicate that we have things to say that are both factually new and analytically new and to get you under the tent is a fact that scares me—not The Economist per se. It’s an incredible frustration that I’ve got some of the most decent, hard-working, honest, passionate, straight-shooting, non-ideological people who just want to tell the damn truth, and how to get this past this image that we’re just middlebrow, you know, a magazine that your grandparents get, or something, that’s the challenge. And I just don’t know how to do it, so if you’ve got any ideas, tell me.”

I haven’t picked up Newsweek in at least twenty years. I pick up The Economist occasionally, but I never have time to read it. If I did have (or take) the time to read a newsweekly, though, I would definitely choose The Economist, which covers everything in-depth, at leisure, in a thoughtful way, with background, and free of cant; and whose editorial staff indicates that it has an interest in understanding the whole world—often from the perspective of those living abroad, not from a distinctly American point of view.

I think American journalism’s biggest weakness is its obsessive solipsism. For a media elite that prides itself on its sophistication, the columnists and commentators whose opinions seem to matter (in both the MSM and the blogosphere) are maddeningly—and even frighteningly, considering the bad intentions of some of the bad actors out there—provincial and America-centric.

That’s my cosmopolitanism showing, though, and I don’t consider myself a laboratory. I certainly don’t represent any typical bloc of voters. Still, some of the comments at the New York Observer site reflect my point of view. Like this one:

Dear Jon Meacham, you just don’t get it. I (a well-educated consumer of print journalism) do not exactly look down on Newsweek. I’m a big fan of yours, too. Nobody doubts that it has good journalism, even though it is is a somewhat dumbed-down, glossly format. But the Economist offers something beyond coverage of the same three, U.S.-focused issues. The Economist is far from perfect; it has a lot of problems. But, the fact is, there is a whole lot more going on in the world than the U.S. presidential election, Iraq, and Afghanistan, important as these issues may be. A lot more. The Economist regularly reports on issues in every region. The U.S. news media, a decade or so ago, got hooked on the “big story.” That’s a great scale economy, but is really does not do the trick. So, you know, if you want to become more global in your coverage and aim straight for the cosmopolitan set, without dumbing it down, then you will get new readers. But, I suspect you will lose a lot, too. You’d have to lay out more money for less subscribers. I doubt you will do that…

Yep. I think the narrow focus and simplistic storylines don’t appeal to those (the educated) who are willing to take out the time to read a newsweekly. It’s also likely that the concept of a newsweekly  is hopelessly outdated. News comes in rivers! It’s everywhere! Who cares what happened last week, fer crissakes? If we’re interested in the “news,” we wanna know what’s happening now.

But another reader at the Observer offers a different kind of critique, specific to Newsweek’s reporting—its compact with its readers—, and backs it up with evidence [I have taken the liberty of adding a link to the AJR piece he quotes, which I've been meaning to write about for a very long time but never got around to; it is the clearest indication by far that newsrooms now consider themselves to be primarily in the storytelling (rather than fact-reporting) business [e.a.]:

Baby Boomer Professor (not verified) says:

Dear Mr. Meacham,

You can’t figure out why we have deserted Newsweek because the political correctness you stand for made it unwise for us to tell you the truth. I subscribed to Newsweek for years. I remember George Will’s column pooh-poohing the China Syndrome the week Three Mile Island happened. I waited gleefully for Will’s next column, which came out headlined, “As I was Saying…” Once leaving Newsweek was as unthinkable as leaving the Democratic Party. But then came your beloved Clintons, and you changed.

Here’s your public face, the obnoxious Evan Thomas, trying to put the best spin on heading the Duke lynch mob:

[On Newsweek's coverage of the Duke rape case]: “The narrative was properly about race, sex and class…. We went a beat too fast in assuming that a rape took place…. We just got the facts wrong. The narrative was right, but the facts were wrong.”
– American Journalism Review, August/September 2007 issue.[1]

Consider the mind-blowing implications of that “defense” of Newsweek’s abominable reporting—they got the story right; it was only the facts (which is to say: everything) they got wrong. Huh? You can see why some former devotees of American journalism are shaking their heads and wondering what’s happened to the news business (beyond the obvious disappearance of news reporting from TV).

There’s a call for a nationwide “sacred conversation about race.” Naturally, it comes from the disgraced church under whose aegis the not-sacred Rev. Jeremiah Wright preached for 35 years:

 Rev. H. John Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ, speaks at a press conference at Trinity United Church of Christ Thursday, April 4, 2008 in Chicago announcing that the UCC , joined by the National Council or the Churches of Christ in the USA are calling for a nationwide “sacred conversation” abut race in the United States.

Naturally, this call would come from the disgraced outfit under whose aegis the not-sacred Rev. Jeremiah Wright nurtured grievances and spread poisonous lies to his parishioners for more than two decades.

Unable to stir up attention for her most recent movie, washed-up celebrity Winona Ryder apparently made a bid for attention by using a less traditional route—shoplifting (again).

As you can see by following this Google News link, there’s more about the shoplifting than about her movie.*** That’s because the critics weren’t kind, if the NYT’s Manohla Dargis’s review gives any indication:

Oh, yes, Winona Ryder, who memorably starred in “Heathers,” shows up periodically as Death Nell, a mysterious vamp with a Black Widow complex and some nasty black heels. I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing in this film, and I don’t believe that Mr. Waters or Ms. Ryder know either.

It seems like it was so long ago that Winona Ryder mattered to anybody, doesn’t it? Does anyone care about Hollywood anymore?

Richard Corliss recently had the guts to ask three of its biggest stars if they were, well, over:

I sat with three of the most popular actors of the past few decades — Robert Redford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise — who were promoting their new film, Lions for Lambs. I posed to them an indelicate question: Are movie stars obsolete? Consternation erupted as the three quickly and forcefully dismissed the idea.

Well, they would, since they have not only their livelihoods but their entire egos invested in the notion that the system that has been in place since they can remember will always be there. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Old media is imploding. Not even the movies have a hold over us anymore.

————-

*** Once upon a time (back in 1994, in Rolling Stone magazine), Ryder was lecturing other young stars about how grateful they should be for their success:

“For a long time, I was almost ashamed of being an actress,” Ryder says. “I felt like it was a shallow occupation. I’d go to see a band with friends from school, and people would be watching every move I made. They’ be judging me: ‘Look at her shoes! I bet those cost $400!’ That affected me. I grew up with no money.” …

Ryder often beats me to the next question.

“Why am I so defensive? I’m defensive because it offends me so much when… OK, I don’t want to fuck this up… I knew a lot of young actors who live in these dumps. They have their books scattered, and their mattress is on the floor - and they’re millionaires. That’s fine. That’s their way of living. But the reason they’re doing it is that they’re ashamed. And I’ve talked to them about it. You just want to say, ‘Don’t live this way to show people that you’re real and you’re deep.’ It offends me, because I know what it’s like to be in poverty, and it’s not fun, and it’s not romantic, and it’s not cool.”

Last year, Ryder wrote in a diary: “I feel like it’s OK to be who I am. It’s OK to be a fucking movie star. It’s OK to live in a nice house.”

I can’t help but note that the young actor she was dissing, Ethan Hawke, has gone on to enjoy career success in many different branches of the arts, while Winona Ryder, who had so much promise, has faded from view.

It’s a little cruel of the New York Post to team up news of Tina Brown’ new web venture

“It’s a news aggregation site for the busy and beleaguered, put out by a smart group of editors,” Brown told Media Ink.

Brown, who rose to prominence as the queen of buzz at Tatler in London, and ran Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, wouldn’t pull back the curtain on her latest venture any further, and says the site is not yet ready to launch.

“It’s very early on,” said Brown. “When we’re ready to roll, we’ll start to experiment by putting it into its trial stage.”

with a media pitch from Carnie Wilson begging some media outlet to track her as she tries to lose weigh (again) [e.a.]:

Sources say she is actively peddling a package that will include before-and-after pictures, plus an extensive sit- down interview or interviews. …Wilson, who’s been in an ongoing battle with her weight, actually dished to OK! magazine several weeks ago, saying she was very disturbed by a recent TMZ photo that showed her having put on weight, and that she was determined to get back into shape.

Now, it’s preposterous that Carnie Wilson had to see a picture of herself on TMZ before realizing that she’d put on weight [!], but it sure does grab your interest if you’re a sucker for a good story. Doesn’t it?

This person, who you don’t know and don’t care to know, lays herself open to you (and millions of others) in a bid to heal herself of her wounds, a process that, watched with ardent interest by you, also may also allow you to cleanse your spirit.

Now, that’s (disposable) entertainment!  (Tina, eat your heart out!—but I’ll be on the lookout for your venture.)

It looks like the “try anything” ethos is indeed—finally—taking hold among book publishers. Following on news of HarperCollins’s new “studio” comes this report about a project from Crown that was disseminated over the Internet by its author before he landed his book deal:

By rising to prominence without the financial backing of a mega-publisher, Sigler has defied the industry’s modus operandi. He’s discovered how to assemble, retain and sell to a growing audience, all on a shoestring budget.

“We are always looking for authors who have a platform and a core fan base, and our goal is to grow their audience and find new readers,” said Tina Constable, Crown’s publisher. “Scott is no exception and his fan base is already formidable. The wave of the future is how we harness the Internet to find these new readers, and we are devoting an enormous amount of energy and resources into this effort. The traditional model for publishing our books is quickly becoming obsolete and we recognize that creative Internet strategies are necessary if we want to remain competitive.”

There is vast, wide open country for enterprising types looking to exploit the very Long Tail of book publishing.

Saddle up!