What's a News Magazine to Do Today?

George Hackett has been a senior editor at Newsweek for 13 of his 25 years with the magazine. During his career, George has edited some of Newsweek’s most popular features, including “Peri-scope,” “Perspec-tives,” “My Turn” and “Conven-tional Wisdom Watch.” He has also been an entrepreneur as well as an editor. George launched both “Cyberscope” and “Focus: On Technology” during the ’90s, before becoming Newsweek’s science and technology editor in 1995. Add an early period writing in the “National Affairs” section, and you have a well-qualified commentator on the state of news gathering and reporting in 2005.

The agent most responsible for driving many of the recent changes in the world of journalism is the speeding up of the news cycle, according to George. Network TV news and newspapers, not so long ago, were the reliable delivery vehicles for up-to-date and even breaking news within a 24-hour news cycle. Today, events explode visually all over the world, as they happen, on cable and Internet outlets. Further-more, bloggers broadcast their analyses without a pause. The “commentary” on events accompanies the viewing of them, as they happen in real time.

The weekly news magazine fits securely within today’s timeframe for news delivery, and has surrendered neither its niche nor its clients, according to George. News magazines offer accuracy: they have the time and the drive to check facts; and reflection: in a relatively compact format, they can gather, organize and digest major news events, and questions or trends that interest the public. News magazines have value-added aspects: color features, opinion and humor, length and context, and portability. People still do like to have something physical to hold.

Public attitudes toward the press have been on a downward track for years according to the Pew Research Center. George notes that the public seems to feel that the mainstream media are behind the times, and perhaps not transparent; the public suspects partisan views may be shaping the coverage. The center’s June 2005 survey verifies the recent trend—it shows the public to be critical of the press, yet still favorable in its overall view of news organizations themselves. “In fact, the public has long been two-minded in its views of the news media, faulting the press in a variety of ways, while still valuing the news and appreciating the product of news outlets,” according to the report released June 26, 2005 [http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=248].

Several issues contribute to the syndrome documented by the Pew survey, George feels. “There are very few news organizations that spend the money necessary to gather the news well,” he says. “It’s expensive and tricky. The network news ratings are down, and there’s a corresponding decrease in the amount spent on research and travel. Yet the costs are up, and stories are more expensive to cover. Just think about Iraq. The presidential campaign is another example. It lasts much longer than campaigns in the past; the candidates travel so much; and airfare to travel with the president is one and a half times what a first-class ticket costs.”

Another issue undermining the public’s confidence—one mentioned by all the student editors at Milton—is the rise of news as entertainment, rather than information. George points out that “when 24 hours of news is covered every day, that represents a lot of air time to fill. CNN, for instance, relies on repeated video clips and talking heads; it feeds on the back-and-forth of arguments. Coverage of the death of John Paul II and the election of his successor is a good example. Newsweek recognized those events as major news, and devoted two magazine covers to it. There were long periods of time when nothing was happening that were filled with video reruns and commentators giving analysis and predictions. Eventually the whole process was treated almost as a festival. People in St. Peter’s Square were referred to as ‘the faithful,’ or ‘pilgrims.’ Who knows if that is what they were? They were people who gathered there for many reasons. The whole process could have come across to the viewers as entertainment. They assumed that the public was in favor of the notion that this man, as a Christian, was a great person, when that was not the universal view. They lost sight of the controversial aspects of his leadership; his views on birth control and HIV/ AIDS were buried in the celebration of the crowds.

“Then of course,” George says, “there’s the ‘news’ that is really only entertainment, like Michael Jackson’s trial, or Martha Stewart’s imprisonment.

“Does the ‘news as entertainment’ issue spread to news magazines?” George asks rhetorically. It does, he acknowledges. Everything is competitive. Newsweek has 3.1 million subscribers; the magazine must cater to some extent to the mass market.

While the Milton student journalists complain that the “mass market” is lethargic in its pursuit of the truth, the Pew Research Center finds a large segment of the public active in consulting many sources for their information, conducting much of that searching and reading online. George doesn’t see the public as apathetic, necessarily; rather he sees the country as much more divided than in past eras. “They are less willing to read and try to understand what is different from what they believe. News fatigue is a big factor, too. The presidential campaign was exhausting, lengthy and divisive. It’s just difficult to keep your eye on the ball of a troubling, divisive story. People grab for the simple side of a story, and are not interested even in listening to different points of view.

“The level of knowledge and professionalism in large news outlets is quite high, and the job of journalists is ultimately to search for, and be accountable for, accuracy. People seem to think that writing about bad things that happen during a war is unpatriotic, that any criticism is anti-American. But Newsweek, as is the case with other major news outlets, is not full of liberals or leftists. You can’t put a generic label on the press. The notion of journalism is to find out the news, to question authority, to look for things going wrong. Journalists have always operated according to the theory ‘It’s better that you know.’”

Cathleen Everett

 

Back to Magazine