“what Michael Bay is to movies, but without the profitability and veneer of high culture”

Ha ha, what?

Anyway: Haven’t read a full issue of Newsweek since the late ’70s (oh God, SO old) and it was crap then. Have leafed through the thinner version of the 2000s; that it could have fewer pages and still be worse was a wonder to behold.

Since when do I need a reservation at the Golden Corral?

Man, you had to go there, huh? Mostly 3-4 months since McMegan was fired retired departed The Atlantic. Meh, it was nice while it lasted.

PS: The hubcap really seals the deal in your photo.

that it could have fewer pages and still be worse was a wonder to behold.

Sort of like McMeg reducing a sauce…

When I was a backpacking hippie-dippie in the late ’70s/early ’80s, I recall reading about Jim Jones getting the masses to really drink the Kool Aid. I think that might be the only Newsweak that was worth reading; I was off in some Asian hinterland where there were no other Engl lang “news” sources. Always been boring fluff propoganda otherwise. When I want trashy gossip, I prefer People, which generally doesn’t have delusions of grandeur.

That said, what Baba Shetty conveniently neglects to mention is that undoubtedly there will be lay-offs of the workers involved in the printing, production and distribution of this boring rag. For those workers, I am truly sorry that entitled worhtless snobby Tina Brown managed to trash their livelihoods.

$40 million plus is the cost involved in the physical manufacturing and distribution of the physical product.

Fucking 1 percenters falling down on the job again! Clearly they’ve failed to buy the thousand copies/week that “Trickle Down” economics says they are supposed to be buying.

It’s hot, fast, sexy, cool.

Yes but they calculated those values using Megan’s calculator, the real values are “lukewarm, plodding, neuter, and square”.

@Happenstance: It means she provides less of a veneer of high culture than even Michael Bay. Who provides none.

undoubtedly there will be lay-offs of the workers involved in the printing, production and distribution…

Electrons are people too, my friend…

A show of hands: How many people here think McMegs can tell the difference between stainless steel and brushed aluminum?

Baba Shetty? Really?

It’s hot, fast, sexy, cool.

Want proof? Check out Ben Stein’s–yes, THAT Ben Stein, the one who appears in a documentary promoting creationism–latest video: What NOT to Do With Your Money.

Wanna get hotter, faster, sexier, cooler? You can’t.

The small amount of chromium in stainless steel (~10%) is enough to interfere with gianourmous-robotic McMegs’ Mcthought Mcprocess.

Non-magnetic, brushed aluminum, not so much.

Even though McMegs doesn’t realize it, she can tell the difference…

Jane Harmon would have done better to light half her husband’s money on fire than watch him invest it in Newsweek, hire Tina, and then croak. What an idiotic businessman he must have been in his dotage. I wonder if trustees tried to get that deal to purchase Newsweek unwound based on his competence or lack of?

Sully, Mistah Kurtz, AND McMegan?

Wherever does Tina Brown get her talent-finding skilz?

A fine Ioway ute this afternoon looked at My Dog Arthur and pronounced him

CUTE.

Arthur? CUTE?????

I gotta go home.

If I remember correctly, Harmon only paid a dollar and assumed the debts. I’m going to assume that there were some tangible assets that he sold off in order to hang onto his money.

I hear that sorta talk all the time from Oregon ranch hands (and OSU football players), but they’re talking sheep, not dogs…

As I tweeted, my beloved 83 year-old father is the only person I know who is going to miss Newsweek/Daily Beast. And not all that much.

Well, going to the web and doing print on the side worked out pretty well for some people, but I don’t think Newsweak has the same quality of output or fans.

Me too, 40 years ago. I think Newsweek came up with the term “gumshoes” for the Watergate bandits. And then after that not so much.

Creamed corn is the new quinoa.

Can I get some Himalayan salt with that? Hold the pink.

We want to share that [laying off employees] internally before we discuss it.

They want to “share” it? JHC on a popsicle stick, I hate that Inhuman Resources crap. Visualize me holding up my middle finger and saying, “Share this!”

There is so much brutal fucking hilarious content in this post that I don’t even know where to begin. I did find the following section amusing, however.

Ad Age: You will also be cutting staff; can you say how many?
Mr. Shetty: No. We want to share that internally before we discuss it.

What Mr. Shitty Shetty means to say is that he needs to ensure that he’s at least several time-zones away from ground zero before the “cutting staff” bomb is deployed, lest he risk being drawn and quartered by a somewhat less than enthusiastic ex-staff. On the other hand, “Everybody understands that digital is the future and the present,” so no worries, right?

edgy old new media critic Howard Kurtz

<<== Hahaha!

I looked up "Howard Kurtz" in the dictionary. It said, "See: Media Hack, Self-Important Jagoff, Tool, Clown, Unimaginable Putz"

I didn't know where to look first, so I pretty much gave up.

Jane Harmon would have done better to light half her husband’s money on fire than watch him invest it in Newsweek, hire Tina, and then croak.

Hahahahaha!!!!

Tina Brown is like a plague infested rat gnawing its way through the publishing world. The New Yorker never recovered from that encounter. And RIP Newsweek. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving mag. What WILL I do to fill the half hour wait at the dentist’s office?

My dentist’s office has Sports Illustrated and Architectural Digest. Variety is important.

It’s unfair to paint Tina Brown in such a negative light. It’s self-evident that she’s a veritable giant in the Land of the Movers and Shakers. How do I know this? It’s simple, really. Tina Brown is often a guest on the living monument to gravitas and journalistic holy writ that is Morning Joe.

Y’all laugh, but Tina’s folding George F’n Will into the Thin Lizzy of ezines!

Man when I tell you she was cool, she was red hot
I mean she was steaming

When is Time going to follow suit? It’ll be the only way I can get rid of my gift subscription gracefully.

You got the CBS,
And the ABC.
You got Time and Newsweek,
They’re the same to me.

Awww… linky to Zombie covergirl Diana all busted.

No mourning here. Newsweek has been dead for a long time; it’s finally getting a decent burial.

People are still reading Newsweek? I gave up that rag over ten years ago. It wall started when my wife bought several copies of PEOPLE magazine. I read both and found I was better informed by reading PEOPLE magazine. That was the last year I ever looked at Newsweek. The wife still buys PEOPLE from time to time.

Still, a photo *shop* of Jane Harmon lighting a dollar bill on fire over Sydney’s grave would be funny….

How does Newsweek plan to pay its high priced talent with internet ad revenues?
How many current readers of Newsweek who I assume don’t get their news online already because of lack of computer access or knowledge to use a computer will make the jump to Newsweek online?
How long before print media demands a government bailout to save them from internet competition?
The Government needs people to read its propaganda. It needs a method to shape public opinion.
I wonder if the GOP will bring the fairness doctrine to the internet and insist FDL put in one fact free GOP story for every fact filled story that is put on FDL?

Ever since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed less and less people read the news. Rupert Murdock managed to get more readers by doing shock news, celebrity news, naked woman in some of his newspapers in other countries and of course spreading Hate of everybody not White Male Straight, Conservative and Christian.
However that base of readers is shrinking and with it so is their add revenue.
If we want to save the Main Stream Media I am not sure we want to we need the Fairness Doctrine back.
Younger and more educated voters tend to get their news from blogs and the Daily Show.
By trying to control the Media the Right has been destroying the Media and creating an audience for Left Wing blogs and TV news parody.

Yer goin’ to Hell for that graphic, TBogg. I’ma goin’ with you, I guess, since I laugh every time I look at it.

Here are some real live Newsweek covers from the decades of its soon-to-cease existence, presumably selected by the magazine’s management based on some “OMG scale” they must have felt would attract the most eyeballs (via Southern Beale).