At Newsweek, it's all Obama all the time

Have you noticed as I have that the comically named Newsweek magazine has been getting thinner and thinner every year to the point that, as Laura Ingraham recently observed, it's little more than two covers with an erectile dysfunction ad in between? The problem is that there are too many Obama cheerleaders in the print media already. If Newsweek wants more readers, it should start evenhandedly covering the news. Predictably however, they are taking a different tack....

From the NewYorkPostOnline...

On Monday, Newsweek unveils the most dramatic overhaul in its history -- one that parent Washington Post Co. hopes will take it from a money-losing position in the weekly-news category to a money-making one in the thought-leader category.

Part of the strategy is to shed lower-paying readers, who today pay an average of only 47 cents an issue for a subscription, even though it costs Newsweek at least $1 to produce and mail. Time subscribers pay an average of 34 cents an issue, while the more upscale The New Yorker fetches 98 cents and The Economist garners $1.96.

On the circulation front, Newsweek currently promises advertisers it reaches 2.6 million, but on June 1 that will drop to 1.9 million and by January it will fall again to 1.5 million.

Newsweek hopes to double the price subscribers pay to about 80 cents a copy.

In addition to the lower circ, the mag's content will change, moving away from chasing breaking news stories.

The new Newsweek will have four main sections. Scope will replace the old Periscope section, and The Take will feature all the magazine's columnists.

Features will be long narratives, which Meacham is calling, "The First Draft of History," and photo essays. The Culture will cover TV, movies and books each week, but with fewer reviews.

On the newsstand, consumers will see the cover price go up by $1 to $5.95.

Somehow I don't think rearranging and renaming the far-left slanted articles and op-eds and then raising the news-stand price by almost 500% will lure more readers. Even government-educated econ majors can tell you that if you raise the price of something, fewer people will buy it. It probably never occurred to anybody over there to report in a fair and balanced way the news of the day. That's what'll get readership up....but, and this is a dealbreaker for a liberal, it will make them unpopular with The One. And Newsweek's publishers, being tools of the Left, want to avoid being seen as unfavorable to The One, even if it means utter failure of their mag.