Time Magazine

Eric Kallgren    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 10:05pm on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009

Writing in the grand Time magazine style on June 8, 2009, James Poniewozik fervently refuses to draw conclusions or even frame the problem in his article "If the Journalism Business Fails, Who Pays for Journalism?:"

"Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that nothing saves journalism. "Journalism," that is, as a profession and as currently constructed: a full-time job paid for by newsgathering entities through a combination of subscriptions and advertising.

Let's assume—with maybe a rare few exceptions—that just goes away. Let's assume that you can improve journalism as much as you want, take advantage of the possibilities of new media as much as you want, but in general, people still simply do not want to pay for it, and it still remains worth far less to advertisers than it used to be. Let's assume newspapers fold en masse, and going online-only does not save enough money to pay people to do journalism as their chief source of income. That's gone.

What replaces it? And by that, I mean, who pays for what replaces it?"

More if you dare:
http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2009/06/08/if-the-journalism-business-fails-who-pays-for-journalism/

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 10:12pm on Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Time magazine's annual "100 Most Influential People" poll has been hacked, with millions of bogus votes for "moot," Folio magazine reported on April 22, 2009:

"Even Time.com isn’t immune to hackers. The magazine’s annual online poll of the top 100 most influential people in government, science, technology and the arts has been flooded with fake votes by followers of 4chan, an online message board.

Taking advantage of an apparent lack of authentication or validation of the online process, hackers used “autovoters” to inundate the Time poll with millions of votes for “moot,” a pseudonym of Christopher Poole, operator of 4chan. Voting went live March 19."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:07pm on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Time and Newsweek magazines will never be The Economist, Matt Pressman argued in Vanity Fair on April 20, 2009:

"Time and Newsweek seem to think The Economist is an opinion journal, and that emulating it is simply a matter of adding more analysis, a stronger editorial viewpoint, and maybe cleverer covers. In 2006, Newsweek editor-in-chief Jon Meacham told the New York Observer, “The Economist doesn’t even attempt to do original reporting, particularly.” He’s wrong. Last week's Economist, a typical issue, published stories datelined Tallinn, Colombo, and Lagos. A little help for you Newsweek readers out there: those cities are located in Estonia, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria. But instead of filling their articles with self-serving quotes from government ministers you’ve never heard of, The Economist’s correspondents just give you the essential facts and a meaningful takeaway, whether the information came from their own reporting, the local press, or some obscure think tank."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 11:15am on Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

March 23, 2009: Donald Fries, the publisher of Time magazine, is resigning from the job. Mark Ford, the president of Time Inc.'s newsmagazine group -- which includes Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated -- will take over ad sales for Time. The departure of Fries follows the retirement last fall of Edward McCarrick, the worldwide publisher of Time magazine, amid a broad restructuring at Time Inc. McCarrick, a 35-year veteran, was not replaced.