Time magazine gloats again

Did anyone else notice the smug piece toward the front of the latest print edition of Time that takes another poke at the newspaper industry? The piece explains about how the newspaper industry is loaded down with overhead (editors, presses, trucks, etc.) and sinking ad revenues even when overall eradership is strong?

I just wish Time would take a look at itself as a print medium and gives us the same kind of hard-edged reporting on its own front. I read Time almost every week, and let me tell you, it is getting really skinny, and they have the same overhead.

I just resent their detached analysis of newspapers and the smug attitude they take, when it is clear they are sucking wind like the rest of us.

 

Both Time and Newsweek are anorexic.

They've got a lotta nerve.

 

Here's the link
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1885349,00.html

The article is breaking down the Pew Center's annual report on the media.
Not a defense, I haven't had time to read the article yet, just saying.

 

In what way is the piece smug or gloating? This is written in essentially the same institutional tone as everything else they present.

 

I agree. I read the piece two days ago and did a double take when I saw this thread. I thought I'd missed something in the issue.

 

Jay, Zombie, JOhnny D:
Actually, the piece I'm talking about is not the PEW piece you linked. I looked for a few minuetes online and couldn't find it, which is why I didn't link to it.

The one I'm referring to is on page 13 of the March 30 issue, titled "The Moment" (a weekly, upfront feature), in this case a short piece by David Van Drehle that starts off talking about the Seattle PI and then segues into the newspaper industry as a whole, listing some of the overhead costs that weigh down newspapers in the Web era.

Trust me, if you erad that one, you will get a sense of the smugness I talk about. (i.e., "The busienss was a gas while it lasted, but that's a topic for the press-club bar.") It's not that he cheers the demise of newspapers---more like he calls us doomed for being stupid enough to carry all this bloated overhead---which I say has got to be a lot of the same overhead they themselves are shouldering.

Like I said, I glanced through Time online for about 2 minutes and couldn't find it, but I"m sure anyone here could find it if they looked a while. I just don't feel like it---I'm sitting here looking at hard copy right now, and that'e enough for me.

Lean and mean? That's Time, all right, for all the wrong reasons.

 

Newsweek's new model apparently contains stories written mostly in first person....WTF? It's jarring and, I think, makes it all so much less authoritative.

 

Here is the link:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1886551,00.html

I did not have a problem with the way it was written. The pullout reworked one of his sections to say "The newspaper biz was a gas while it lasted. Now all that's left is hot air," but it doesn't read that way in his text.

It struck me as the way someone would write about any industry, and I'd be insulted if a journalist took it easy on the newspaper industry and wrote it softer than he or she would for other industries. I would imagine most would have tried to be brutally honest, and he was. Did it address everything that's led to this? No, but we have dozens of threads on the topic and still can't figure it all out. The writer used to work for The Washington Post, so it's not like he's coming from left field with the piece.

I didn't have a problem with it.

 

I could understand an article like this better if Time and the rest of the news mags were wiping their asses with Benjamins in the loo of their G-5s, but it isn't exactly like that. To me it's like the Clippers Web site posting articles about how shitty Oklahoma City is.

 

Johnny D:
I hear you. Let me expand my stance a bit. Over the last few weeks, I have seen Time take what I call potshots at the newspaper industry, i.e. the top 10 most likely papers to fail, or however that list was titled. Then this.

I'm just waiting for Time to put themselves under that microscope. They are print media. Their ad sales are sucking wind. Their product is losing pages bigtime. Time, Inc. has laid off a bunch of folks.

When do we get the lowdown on that in the spirit of journalistic objectivity. If, IF, you are going to put the target on the print industry, then, by golly, explain YOUR own problems to your readers.

 

I can't argue with that.