Famous college-testing company Kaplan is now racing to get rid of all its loser "print journalism" properties, with forgotten newsweekly Newsweek now officially being handed to some broker who will put it out of its misery. (Kaplan also owns the Washington Post, the struggling youth-blogging consortium and holding pen for insane old neo-cons.) But Newsweek is an important media brand, right?
As newspapers and magazines continue to fold in our "New Economy With No Room For Newspapers and Magazines," we are all expected to mourn -- literally mourn -- every doomed editorial title. Why? Because the news is written by people with a vested interest in keeping newspapers and magazines afloat, of course! This is why there were about a dozen actual reported articles on the massive immigration protests in every big American city last Saturday, and approximately 5,000 articles about the closure of the food magazine Gourmet.
The whole concept of the American Newsweekly is dated and unnecessary, because anyone who vaguely gives a shit about anything has already heard all the dumb national news and the one international story allowed each week and the pointless retread of whatever pop-culture or sports thing and the already-discredited New Study Proves It linking blueberries to obesity and handjobs to breast cancer, etc. There is No Point to getting an even more dumbed-down version in a flimsy glossy magazine barely held together with a couple of allergy and erectile-dysfunction ads.
But what do media-watchers have to say about the shocking/utterly expected news that Kaplan/WaPo is getting rid of the money-bleeding weekly? Here you go: "Why Not Combine Newsweek With Slate?"
Sure, why not? Just dump all of America's rote contrarian topical essays -- "People think dogs are good pets, but they're actually the worst things alive," etc. -- at one URL the rest of us can safely ignore, forever.
OH BUT WAIT, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham wants to buy it himself! We can say with some personal experience that this is the guaranteed route to incredible wealth. [Guardian/The Awl]
