Newsweek has been a consistent hammer against the Trump administration as of late, with one MSNBC-ish cover after another.
Apparently, outrage doesn’t pay the bills. Or keep editors. Or keep “reporters” in the pews cranking out content. From the Daily Beast:
In a company meeting, several editors announced that the outlet had fired Editor in Chief Bob Roe, Executive Editor Ken Li and reporters Celeste Katz, Josh Saul, and International Business Times editor Josh Keefe.
The editors told staffers some of the firings were not official, but according to one person with direct knowledge, both Katz and Keefe were locked out of their work email and computer accounts and instructed to meet a human-resources representative offsite shortly after Roe was fired.
Newsweek also sent staff home for the day.
Though the editors did not elaborate on why the top staff left the company, three staffers who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity pointed out that Li, Katz, Saul, and Keefe had all published pieces reporting on the company’s recent troubles.
It was not very long ago — 20 years maybe — that Newsweek was one of the “Big Three” news magazines in America, right there next to TIME and US News & World Report (with National Review a very close fourth member).
That was, of course, before the Washington Post’s transition from local newspaper of record — the Metro section being something the old Post prided itself on despite its national heavyweight status — to the conscience of the Democratic Party, to today’s amalgamation where it seems to be Newsweek in macro — Newsweek after all sharing the same culture by virtue of being a project of the Washington Post.
…and as for the Daily Beast? Yes, once upon a time, Newsweek and the Daily Beast were one in the same. After a somewhat bitter divorce? No small wonder why “The DB” is reveling in Newsweek’s misfortune.
Yet this all points towards a more alarming narrative as we discuss the context of “fake news” and the like. Clearly Newsweek (and the Daily Beast, and most assuredly the Washington Post) all have editorial viewpoints. All of them slant their news based on the subjective perspectives of the media as a whole, their editors, their reporters and even their “bloggers” — which unfortunately, is what most of the second-tier legacy media writers are with notable exceptions.
Of course, we live in an era where “fake news” is defined as “news that contradicts my worldview” — a petulant and sophomoric definition at best.
What Newsweek failed to embrace in its transition from “objective” media outlet to subjective cheerleading was the fact that it believed its own narrative. Newsweek’s front covers were selling the magazine, not its content — the content being boring, derivative, and expected. In short, no one believed that Newsweek was presenting an honest perspective — the firm delineation that separates so-called “fake news” from opinion journalism.
Opinion journalism is perhaps the only journalism worth reading today, if for no other reason than it is honest. It is the reason why despite political differences, many people do continue to read the Washington Post in Virginia — because despite the differences in viewpoints, the WaPo’s perspective is legitimate and not contrived. The same goes for most of the Virginia legacy media operations; the same even holds true for progressive stalwart Blue Virginia.
What strays the boundaries? Organizations such as Media Matters, Media Research Council, World Net Daily, Talking Points Memo, InfoWars, or any host of media outlets that ends with the caveat “this is what you should think.”
News is always filtered through a medium (the journalist, essayist, contributor, reporter), hence the reason why we are collectively called a media. Fake news is a worthless term created by Kellyanne Conway to refute a talking point — which was in itself fake news. Perspectives? That’s not fake news. Opinion journalism? Also not fake news (no matter how stridently we may disagree with its contents).
The real danger lies in two areas: disinformation and sponsored content. The latter was perfected by Buzzfeed (which is today treated as a frontline digital journal); the former was perfected by the alt-right and their drones in a black box back in St. Petersburg and Bulgaria — some for the lulz, others for a fine political point. They didn’t build from scratch; they mimicked the Soros-funded ecosystem of progressive blogs and “news sources” quoted by sympathizers in the legacy media… and have been doing so since 2006 at least.
Before the internet, the danger was think tanks cranking out one “alternative fact” after another. The left never got into the game because they had the media doing it for them; the right had to build parallel institutions to get their message out.
Today, the threshold to play is far lower. Newsweek, rather than turning towards authenticity and embracing the age, decided to sell out and mimic what they thought was working for others. Instead, they should have stayed true to their DNA and recaptured the old spirit of the Washington Post of the 1970s.
After all, digital journals and other print publications such as The Atlantic are thriving, for the very reason that they refused to surrender the authenticity of their viewpoint. We know where The Atlantic is coming from; disagree as you may, it’s not a contrived perspective.
…and therein lies the key.
