Product Description

This weekly news magazine reports on each week s developments on the national and global news front through news, commentary and analysis. Its features include national and international affairs, business, lifestyle, society, the arts, politics, the economy, personal business, the Washington scene, health, science and technology.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106 in Magazine Subscriptions
• Formats: Magazine Subscription, Print

Customer Reviews

News? Heck, it's indistinguishable from People Magazine!
My wife and I are longtime subscribers to Newsweek, but no more. We are finally letting our subscription lapse.

Here's why:

1)...It's hard to escape the slew of here-today-gone-tomorrow "celebrities" that seem to increasingly grace the pages of Newsweek. In just the last couple months, P. Diddy has had at least four articles written about him. ... Is this news?

2) All ads, all the time! Even the "news" articles are ads. One entire issue was dedicated to the Playstation 2. Recently they jettisoned a couple news articles to include reviews of high-end cars, wine, and other jealousy-inducing items. You would assume from the tone of so many Newsweek tech articles lately that unless one buys the latest battery-powered gizmo, life on earth as we know it would cease. Better treasure your last breath - and how convenient this transition since several times this year the magazine has been overwhelmed by healthy lifestyle inserts that appear to be part of the magazine. But a closer examination reveals them to be nothing more than massive ads for drugs and health-related products. Very deceptive, since there is no empirical evidence included to counter the claims being made in the article-like inserts. Simply appalling.

3) Pop culture run amok. Any aspirations Newsweek ever had to being a top news journal have been jettisoned. Instead we are greeted with a lowbrow look at "What's Cool" rather than "What's Newsworthy". When everything is relevant, nothing is.

4) Lowering of journalistic quality. Where have the editorial works by the movers and shakers that shape the future (and accurately recall the past) gone to? You used to be able to read an article or editorial by someone like Solzhenitsyn or Kissinger, but now you are more like to get an article by J. Lo or Aguilera....P>...P>6) Target audience dumb-down. It seems the target audience for the magazine consists of teenage girls who follow hip-hop and their video game-playing boyfriends. Does someone need to educate that group? Certainly. But with everyone rushing in to fill that market niche, isn't there anything left for adults? Even a casual read of featured writers like Anna Quindlen reveals a complete lack of logic on the pages of the magazine. No wonder the current generation lacks discernment.

In short, find something else to keep you abreast of the real news. Newsweek's day has come and gone.

A delicate balance
You've got to know you're not getting The Economist when you sign up to buy Newsweek. Not that that's an inherently bad thing. Newsweek needs to be a lot of things to a lot of people, so it can't be the in-depth, serious think-piece journal that a lot of people seem to want it to be.

But let's give Newsweek credit: they have a delicate balance to achieve, and they seem to get it right. The Periscope section has snap and wit. Its Conventional Wisdom Watch always seems to get the direction of its famous arrows exactly right. And its collection of trenchant political cartoons and on-the-mark quotations from the past week's main newsfigures does a great job capturing the pulse of the country.

That's balanced against some great writing. Michael Isakoff is by most accounts the country's best investigative reporter. Howard Fineman's talents as a political writer are unmatched. Jonathan Alter's work never disappoints. And Johnnie L. Roberts knows the business of entertainment like few others.

My one complaint - and and this is where The Economist supporters are on the mark - is with the US-centric viewpoint of the magazine. The ROW ('rest of the world') seems to get the short shrift from time to time. Certainly compared to the resolutely international perspective of the Economist. It's a shame the *international* edition of Newsweek isn't published here. In that edition, the magazine is literally turned inside out: the US pieces smaller, the ROW pieces larger.

Newsweek is, after all, a unit of The Washington Post. If anyone can pull off credible international journalism, it's Katherine Graham's company. Let's hope that Iraq, North Korea and other worldly issues force the editors to let more of that international edition flavor seep into what we see here.

Ho Hum
As News magazines go, Newsweek is probably one of the better ones.

The fact of the matter is that News Magazines are oxymorons. By the time you get the magazine, anything written in it is old news. Technology with the vastly broad and increasing venue for news has made the "News" magazine a dinosaur.

So, if you can't sell news, you have to sell sizzle. Newsweek is competing with the National Enquirer to try and catch your attention. Give it some time and you'll see alien abductions and Bigfoot lead stories.

Of course, political controversy sells too, so expect the editorials to reach hard to stir up things whether they are newsworthy or not. Ad's, Ad's Ad's! Note the demographic is aimed at the older reader. New subscribers in this environment are hard to come by.

I subscribed to Newsweek years ago. I don't miss it. The fact is, I see it often enough every 6 months when I visit my dentist for a cleaning. Occassionally there is a good story. More often than not, I look forward to the novocain and drilling as a refreshing change of pace.

Better to buy for the occassional good article. Not really worth subscribing to, in my opinion.