Newsweek

Newsweek is a weekly news magazine covering current events and politics in America. Newsweek magazine is published by Newsweek, Inc. and is headquartered in New York, N.Y. It has been published since 1933 and is currently owned by Sidney Harman. Newsweek covers national news and is the second largest weekly news magazine in the United States, behind Time Magazine. Newsweek was founded in 1933 as News-Week by Thomas J.C. Martyn, a former foreign Time magazine editor. At that time, the magazine cost 10 cents a copy and $4 per year. The name changed to Newsweek in 1937 and it merged with Raymond Moley's weekly magazine, Today. Moley was a member of Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Brain Trust" and to distinguish itself from its competition, Time, which had a similar format, Newsweek carved a reputation for itself as being more liberal and serious in tone. It was the first to assign writer by-lines for its editorial columns. The Washington Post Company bought the magazine in 1961 and its liberal publisher, Katharine Graham, continued to set the publication apart from its two main competitors (Time and U.S. News & World Report). Starting in 2008, the company went through massive restructuring and suffered a reported 50 percent in subscriber rate loss in one year and $28 million in revenue in 2009. The magazine was sold to stereo pioneer Sidney Harman, who is husband to California Congresswoman Jane Harman, in August 2010. Newsweek's editor Jon Meacham's resignation from the magazine coincided with the sale. 52 percent of the readership are men and 47 percent are women. The average age of readers is 52 and 88 percent have either attended or graduated from college. The average personal income of its readers is $99,792.In the 1950s, Newsweek became a leader in in-depth reporting of racial diversity and in the 1960s, under then-editor Osborn Elliott, it became a voice for advocacy journalism, where subjective political positions are countebalanced with facts. In August 1976, Newsweek reported that federal investigators had enough evidence to prove that former Teamsters Union boss James Hoffa was strangled to death July 30, 1974, the day he disappeared outside a suburban Detroit restaurant. The article further reported that the murder was planned and executed outside Michigan. In 1998, Newsweek killed a story about White House intern Monica Lewinsky's sexual relationship with President Bill Clinton. The story broke on news aggregate website, the Drudge Report, which reported that Newsweek's reporter, Michael Isikoff, had gathered enough evidence from sources to publish the story and name Lewinsky, when at the last minute the magazine decided to pull it. Newsweek eventually published the story after the Drudge Report made it public. The magazine is reknowned for its investigative war reporting, most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. Daniel Klaidman is the Managing Editor.

Articles from Vol. 157, No. 01, January 3

A Bright Day for Energy

Newsweek

Articles from Vol. 157, No. 01, January 3

Periodical details

Find a periodical in our library