When it was announced last week that the Washington Post Company had officially put Newsweek on the block for sale, The Scrapbook was instantly reminded of the classic 1973 National Lampoon cover, depicting a winsome mutt looking slightly askance at a revolver pointed directly at its head: “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.”
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If the joke had been transferred to the cover of Newsweek, The Scrapbook wouldn’t bet on the mutt’s long-term prospects. For the sad truth is that, in the Internet age, Newsweek, along with the other two newsweeklies (Time, U.S. News & World Report), has been sliding slowly but surely into oblivion, and its parent company has been trying for years to unload it.
Which, from one point of view, is too bad. The Scrapbook is never overjoyed to learn about the impending death of any historic publication (perhaps with one or two exceptions) and Newsweek does contain—well, it publishes excellent columns from Robert J. Samuelson and George F. Will every week. But the fact is that not only has Newsweek suffered from its online competition, it seems to have done everything within its power to hasten its own demise. During the 2008 presidential election, for example, its fawningly voluminous coverage of Barack Obama—we lost count of the number of heroic cover portraits—made it something of a journalistic laughingstock, and certainly affirmed every weary accusation of liberal bias in the mainstream media. One year ago, when editor Jon Meacham announced a comprehensive overhaul—designed to create a left-wing journal of opinion, a “thought leader” destined to appeal to an “elite audience”—the faint sounds of trouble rose in volume to a death knell.
To be sure, Newsweek may yet find some buyer willing to pay millions to assume colossal debt and provide a hefty subsidy for a product no one wants. But as The Scrapbook carefully perused the relevant story in the Washington Post, by Frank Ahrens and Howard Kurtz, it was clear that the Post is more than ready to move on. Post Company Chairman Donald Graham delivered the grim tidings to his startled Newsweek colleagues by conference call—one way to put some symbolic distance between the two—and the saga of Newsweek was briefly described as an incident in the glorious history of the Washington Post: “Newsweek, which was founded in 1933, has been part of the Post’s DNA since the paper bought the magazine in 1961 at the urging of Newsweek’s Washington bureau chief Benjamin C. Bradlee, who went on to a storied career as executive editor of the Post.”
Best of all were the generous comments of the storied executive editor himself, 88-year-old Benjamin C. Bradlee: “I loved it,” he said of Newsweek. “It gave me my first shot. It was a great magazine.” Then he quickly corrected himself: “It is a great magazine.” At which point The Scrapbook pictured Bradlee adjusting his tie, taking a sip from his lime juice and gin, and leaning slowly backwards into his chaise longue: “Nobody says you have to keep a magazine that is costing an arm and a leg,” he declared. “I understand why Don put it on the market.”
Translation: My pension and stock options are safe, and the very best of luck to my good friends at Newsweek. ♦
Root Causes Watch
The media love positing explanations for terrorism—poverty, lack of education, post-traumatic stress—that shift blame from the terrorists themselves and, indeed, make the case that they are themselves victims. The most inane example of this tendency in the Times Square bomber coverage? CNN’s Jim Acosta, noting that Faisal Shahzad’s Connecticut house was foreclosed on: “One would have to imagine that that brought a lot of pressure and a lot of heartache on that family.” ♦
Sentences We Didn’t Finish
‘Leave it to an ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and lapping up on the shores of Louisiana to put me and Sarah Palin on the same page. Usually, when the former Alaska governor issues something on Facebook, I roll my eyes at her empty rhetoric about common-sense conservative solutions or some-such. But on the issue of . . . ” (Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post, May 3). ♦
From the ‘We Could Be Greece’ Files
On April 30, the New York Times reported on the austerity measures the IMF and Europeans would attach to the proposed bailout of Greece.
Another reform high on the list is removing the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors like health care, transportation and energy and allowing private investment. Economists say that the liberalization of trucking routes—where a trucking license can cost up to $90,000—and the health care industry would help bring down prices in these areas, which are among the highest in Europe.
So Greece, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, is moving to reduce the role of government in health care in order to make the system more efficient. And the United States, not yet teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, is dramatically increasing the role of government in its health care sector. The editorial board of the New York Times should start reading their paper’s news pages. ♦
You Can Get a Man with a Gun
A very respectful tip of The Scrapbook homburg to Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison, 35—a British sniper who, with two bullets in succession, took out two Taliban fighters firing a machine gun at his comrades—and then hit the gun itself with his third shot. Harrison was taking aim from an astonishing mile and a half away, a new world record.
As the Sunday Times of London reported last week, “The shooting . . . was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound. The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier [Corporal Rob Furlong] who shot dead an al Qaeda gunman in March 2002.”
The feat was accomplished during fighting in Helmand Province last November, but the fact of its breaking the record was discovered only recently. The Accuracy International L115A3 rifle is advertised as effective up to about 5,000 feet. A spokesman for the manufacturer told the Times that “It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.”
The Scrapbook is not entirely convinced that luck played that large a role. There was this detail from the account in the London tabloid, the Sun: “To compensate for the spin and drift of the .338 bullets as they flew 1.54 miles—the length of 25 football pitches—Craig had to aim 6ft high and 20ins to the left.”
The Sun also had by far the best after-action report from the sniper himself: “They were firing on the troop commander—I gave them the good news. They didn’t f— like it.” ♦
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