Big announcement, folks. While my run here at the Good Men Project has been awesome, eventful, and educational, I am moving on to bigger things.** Now that Tina Brown has backed out of talks to become the next editor-in-chief of Newsweek, the second largest national weekly has, naturally, considered me as their next viable candidate.
Okay, not really. What has happened, however, is that Newsweek’s sassy Tumblr blog has issued an open invitation to anyone (yes, anyone) to apply for the position.
“Do you have the brilliant mind, the heroic fortitude, the incredible capacity for alcohol that is required to run Newsweek?” asks the application video.
All kidding aside, the struggle to replace Newsweek’s last editor, Jon Meacham, is an indicative one. As one of the last print-based newsweeklies on the market, Newsweek may represent an era of journalism that’s going the way of the broadsheet. (Don’t know what a broadsheet is? Exactly.)
The magazine avidly courted Brown who turned it down—prudently, some might say—in favor of her increasingly popular online publication, The Daily Beast. (Other people who have passed on the job include one-time head of CNN, Walter Isaacson and Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria.) Newsweek also suffered a massive brain drain recently with the loss of longtime contributors Evan Thomas and Howard Fineman.
Slate Magazine recently published an article about the current state of weekly news publications and why it’s a little presumptuous for Time Magazine to boast “We’ve become a category of one.”
“The twin declines of U.S. News and Newsweek have signaled to the market that the newsweekly category is of such deficient interest to readers and advertisers that it can’t support more than one.”
The article then points to the similar demise of now defunct “general interest” magazines like the Saturday Evening Post (which still has a website—who knew?) “If Newsweek continues its wind-down, Time could join its stablemate Life in the glue factory,” the author states.
In any case, if you’re looking to shake things up and take on the task of reinventing a journalistic brand, email [email protected]. Or, as a reader of online magazines—note: you’re reading one now—what’s your take on the decline of print news magazines? Will you miss them?
**Not true. I will be around whether you like it or not.