Newsweek Proves Its Newfound Relevance With Hillary Clinton, Charlie Sheen Stories
In your meritorious Monday media column: newly newsy Newsweek news, Dan Rather still exists, the exodus from The Daily has already begun, Business Insider is a profit center, and Howard Kurtz's journalistic historical revisionism.
- The new Newsweek is here! Courtesy of Tina Brown! It has Hillary Clinton on the cover! It has lots of white space inside! It features a sheen of competence and cleanliness wrapped around a cast of competent but none-too-exciting writers and subjects! It's the sort of thing that will prompt many jokes about its continued suitability to dental waiting rooms. Tina makes her unconvincing argument for the continued relevance of the newsweekly here: thoughtful articles, pictures, videos... and stuff. (And Charlie Sheen!) I doubt that Tina Brown ever aspired to edit Newsweek. But it feel in her lap, so why not? If it doesn't work out, she can go on to something more interesting. If it does work out somehow, she'll look like a genius. And she can go on to something more interesting.
- Dan Rather. Remember him? He's still doing stories! But nobody is watching too much. But he's still doing stories! Read all about it here.
- The Huffington Post has hired six new reporters. Most interesting: Jon Ward, who was the Washington bureau chief for The Daily. People are already fleeing the future of iPad journalism! All the predictions are coming true.
- Business Insider made a profit of $2,000 last year. Considering all the jobs they provide for writers, that's wonderful. Considering the fact that Henry Blodget could have made more than that panhandling with a mangy dog outside the Times Square subway station on three consecutive weekends in June: ha.
- In January, Howard Kurtz issued a correction (six weeks after the story had run) noting that he'd mistaken Kurt Bardella, Rep. Darrell Issa's spokesman, for Issa himself. Embarrassing thing, for Howie! Then, last week, Bardella was fired for leaking reporters' emails to a NYT reporter. And now that Bardella's momentarily in the DC media doghouse, Kurtz is saying that "He called and impersonated the congressman." Now he purposely misled Howie, you see. Hmm, interesting. Meaning, scarcely believable.