Newsweek and Krugman: New Realities

In a magazine cover, we have a reflection of what's happening not only to the American economy but politics and journalism as well: a close-cropped half of a bearded face and the lines, "Obama Is Wrong: The loyal opposition of Paul Krugman."

Newsweek's story tells us about the economist-turned-pundit who "criticizes the Obamaites for trying to prop up a financial system that he regards as essentially a dead man walking," but also illustrates the desperation of newsweekly magazines to survive.

In financial straits, Newsweek has been cutting its circulation and redefining itself away from the traditional role of presenting the week's news with attitude. With so much of both available on the Internet and cable TV, Newsweek has chosen less news and more attitude.

"If we don’t have something original to say," editor Jon Meacham points out, "we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

The 21st century has not been kind to Henry Luce's invention of Time in the 1920s to make sense of "the million little chaoses of raw news." In a 24/7 tower of babble, Americans no longer need a Voice from Above to tell them what it all means.

As Newsweek moves away from Time and US News, it will be competing for eyeballs and ads with such as the Economist, the New Yorker and Atlantic in telling readers what they don't know they want to know until they see it in a magazine.

The Krugman story is a promising start, a profile of a quirky Nobel Prize winner who keeps offering those in power reality checks and ends thus:

"Krugman thinks that Obama needs some kind of 'wise man' to advise him and mentions Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman who tamed inflation for Reagan and now heads an advisory panel for Obama. How about Krugman himself for that role? 'I'm not a backroom kind of guy,' he says, schlumped over in his Princeton office, which overflows with unopened mail. He describes himself as a 'born pessimist' and a 'natural rebel.' But he adds, 'What I have is a voice.' That he does."

In these parlous times, so does Newsweek, and we can use both.

Media & Politics: Another Crossroads Year

Like 1968, 2008 could decide the direction of American politics for decades to come.

The parallels are striking--a President leaving office with an unpopular war still going on, long-standing social issues to be resolved and cultural changes breaking up what had seemed to be a consensus among previous generations.

Back then, there was Vietnam instead of Iraq, racial and gender equality rather than illegal immigration, and hippies, campus revolts and sexual revolution in place of today's faith-based conflicts over public regulation of private behavior.

The 1960s started with Kennedy's new frontier and ended with Nixon's Silent Majority. Decades of Democratic dominance gave way to Republican rule. Now, Bush's compassionate conservatism is ending and will lead to what?

For most of our history, Americans have been protected from violent change by a double-edged inertia that was slow to correct injustices but was a buffer against the kind of social breakdown that afflicts almost all other nations.

How much of our tranquility was based on technology or the lack of it? In the 1960s, television made the poor, oppressed and victims of war visible for the first time, bringing them into history and American living rooms. Vietnam and racial violence were not confined to impersonal newspaper headlines, and the results were protest and upheaval across the country.

Now, a flood of images and information about terrorism, war and their consequences washes over us 24/7 on cable and online. Politicians are less free to soothe or distract us from our own reactions and opinions.

But as the chaos of this campaign so far illustrates, the results may be division, confusion and uncertainty about whom to trust with the power to make sense of it all and get us back on track. The more we talk, it seems, the more polarized we become. But somebody has to be President and work with a Congress we choose to lead us out of all this.

In 1968, we picked Richard Nixon. In 2008, we will have to do better than that.