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Comment by etrain | Hacker News Reader

We subscribed to Newsweek throughout my childhood, even living overseas. I recall excitedly going through it every time it arrived. As far as the news digest format went, in those days they mixed topic areas fluidly, while keeping their readers informed.

I canceled my personal subscription years ago. To me, the format changes had made it less comprehensive, the quality of writing had declined, and it had become too political. Or, maybe I'd just outgrown it.

Sure, they'll have a digital version, but they have far smaller staff (and impact) than they once did. They're a marginally iconic publication, who were unable to adapt to the new world, and are thus a victim of the changing landscape of journalism.

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I had the exact same childhood experience. Fond memories of sitting on the front porch in summer reading every article.

I remember when Time darkened the OJ Simpson cover to make him appear more sinister! Newsweek was on the right side of that one, and soon they will be gone.

It was foundational learning, along with Sid Meier's Civilization and Winston Groom's Forest Gump and the sequel Gump & Company.

The Gump books are funny enough to keep the attention of a fourth grader, and teach modern American history along the way.

We really, really, really have to figure a way to distribute the bounty of our bigger than ever economy a bit better, so professional journalism can continue.

Was the problem that they were "unable to adapt to the new world," or was the problem that they editorially went off the deep end? Readers abandoned Newsweek as Newsweek's quality declined. Perhaps the one drove the other--with fewer readers, it was tougher to fund expensive journalism. But, from the link: "Last November, she featured a cover story about sex addiction, and in May President Obama was shown wearing a rainbow-colored halo with a headline that read ”The First Gay President.”" The Internet didn't do that; Tina Brown did.

I agree.

There's some kind of blindspot with traditional media: people say "oh, they couldn't handle the competition from the blogs" but that was only after decades of reducing the local papers into skeleton crews - if your newspaper is little more than a platform for syndicating Reuters stories verbatim then yeah, you're asking to be disrupted.

I've seen so much derision toward them for the First Gay President thing but I don't really understand why. It's an obvious play on First Black President Bill Clinton, made poignant by Obama being the actual first black President.

Now, their recent "Heaven is Real" cover on the other hand…

I'd say they went off the deep end in an attempt to adapt to the new world.

> the quality of writing had declined, and it had become too political.

In my mind it has become way too Liberal. Maybe I didn't realize it when I was growing up and reading it every month, but it certainly has changed.

Too bad really, in a time when there's so much opinion pieces and media outlets are all slanted one way or another, it would be nice to have a news organization which simply reported the news and didn't have a vested interest in some political party which slanted its views.

Any magazine that features cover stories from Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Niall Ferguson is hardly 'liberal'.

I would say public TV and radio is the closest thing to this. ("This" being a mostly balanced media organization)

It's impossible to completely eliminate bias though - even absent opinion pieces or editorializing, there's going to be some small level in the stories you choose to cover.

*ed

Wow, downvotes? Anyone care to rebut instead of click and run?

I upvoted, since it is lame to downvote just for an honest disagreement of opinion.

I think NPR is seen as having a liberal slant. NPR has done some very in depth studies of this, counting liberal stories vs conservative, and determined that there was no bias. (I remember hearing this on NPR ;-). However, Republicans are convinced of this bias, and keep trying to cut their funding.

I used to listen to NPR quite a bit on my commute, and I did think they were to the left. (I'm not saying that's a bad thing, mind you.)

I find PBS news coverage more balanced, but a bit dry as well.

>I think NPR is seen as having a liberal slant. NPR has done some very in depth studies of this, counting liberal stories vs conservative, and determined that there was no bias.

The NYT does the same thing, occasioning much laughter and derision from the right. We can't decide if they're being dishonest or if their frame of reference is such that they really believe they're being evenhanded.

As a conservative, I'm convinced NPR is biased. I listen to it every day on the way to work, since it's still preferable to commercial radio (even donated a couple times), but there's no doubt in my mind whoever is calling the shots would love to see the president reelected.

It's not so much how the news gets covered but what gets covered. If this week's DNC talking point is Bain Capital, NPR is covering decades-old events at Bain. If it's "War on Women" then we get to hear from hoary old feminists spouting questionable statistics. If Romney raised more money than Obama this month we get stories on Citizen United, but when Obama raises more money we get stories on just how motivated his supporters are. Benghazi was a big news story until it became apparent the ambassador died in an actual planned attack instead of a mob pissed off about a movie. Then the story disappeared completely.

I don't have any problem with the way they cover stories, for the most part, though occasionally I wince at the way things are described. The big problem is the selection.

I'm always curious if perception of bias is due to bias in and of itself. Does simply hearing a story that is negative to your side automatically make one think "bia" whereas hearing one that accords with your views makes you think "good reporting." I'm not sure anyone's opinion of bias can be trusted, because in our own minds we're not biased.

It isn't so much that hearing a story that's negative to my side makes me think "bias". It's that I hear predominately stories that are negative to my side and positive to the other. Also, pretty much every conservative you meet will tell you the same thing, so it's not just me.

But every conservative you meet is also conservative. That's my point. We're all biased and thus totally unqualified to judge bias. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to, by the way, but we also need to be mindful of our own biases. I think that thought process, more than any change in the press, would go a long way to fixing politics in America.

The other issue is that we assume that stories that are predominately negative means bias, when it doesn't necessarily. Impartiality does not necessarily mean that we think both sides are equally valid. It's sort of like following this abortion/birth control debate. No matter what you're opinion, there is no bias in thinking that Joe Walsh and Todd Akin are full of shit. They are, period. It would be a disservice to say otherwise.

>We're all biased and thus totally unqualified to judge bias.

I have to disagree. I'm pretty sure if I wanted to put in the time I could show that NPR reports, say, 90% of the national stories that hurt Romney but only 60% of national stories that hurt Obama.

Sure, stories about Joe Walsh and Todd Akin should be there. But so should stories about Benghazi and gunwalker.

I consume NPR as my exclusive broadcast news source and I agree with you. NPR is more often balanced and interesting than the others, but there are times when the liberal bias is glaring. Even if all the stories broadcast are balanced, which is often not the case, there is bias even in story selection; why does NPR always have stories about how sad it is to defund the National Park Service instead of stories about how great it is to reduce the national debt and how much taxation and interest this will save in the long run? Because they'd rather pay more taxes and keep the Park Service alive.

A recent example: in a snippet about some magazine's "First Lady Cookie Recipe Cook-off", the invited commentator was a writer for Jezebel.com, a feminist political blog, and while they ostensibly offered a chance for rebuttal, the Jezebel commentator spoke for about a minute and they read the three-words justification from the publisher: "People like it" as a response. One may ask, "Why did they give venue to this commentator, whose opinion is obviously skewed hard to one direction and outside the mainstream concept, and not at least give equal time to someone from Focus on the Family or something?" The answer is, "NPR likes Jezebel more, and wants to promote commentators that will give the audience the perception that this is a sexist/unequal thing".

This might be nit picky, but how is explicitly supporting nature preserves and National Parks a left-wing thing?

You can advocate for tight purse strings while protecting natural beauty for everyone of current and future generations.

I think your sentiment is a bit revealing of the divisiveness present in national political discourse. Supporting the park service shouldn't be seen as left or right, it should be seen as cost benefit analysis that a particular congressperson has made.

Supporting the park service shouldn't be seen as left or right, it should be seen as cost benefit analysis that a particular congressperson has made.

In the present political climate, one of the political parties has (incubated?/)latched onto the generalized anti-government sentiment that came to a head last year around the Occupy movement.

Since National Parks and nature preserves are handled under a government organization, they represent something which that one political party has made a priority to remove in this round of politicking.

it's so weird to me that people feel this way, when NPR is clearly much more Right-ward than me and my friends - but of course, I've lived in San Francisco, Oakland, and Portland.

I wish there was a news source Left of me! It would be fascinating.

Surely there's a Pacifica station near you. They're pretty far to the left of plain-wrap NPR. Are you really to the left of KPFA?

I have no idea, I didn't realize that different NPR stations had different political slants.

Public Radio is painfully liberal in some aspects. I work in the smart grid industry, so I have a podcast with all of NPRs energy stories, and 90%+ are favorable to green energy, solar energy, wind energy - and Anti-Coal/Carbon products.

Now, as it turns out, that happens to be my sweet spot, so I love listening to the echo chamber - but I realize there is a HUGE sector of society (perhaps enough to elect a president) that believes in Carbon/Coal/Oil/Pipelines as the foundation of the US energy economy. Those views, as a policy, are severely under-reported on NPR.

Now - I listen to NPR because I believe those alternative views are inane - but that doesn't stop me from recognizing NRP's bias.

Unfortunately, these days, people are so used to having their own (biased, in almost all cases) views dished back to them, that an unbiased news source is unlikely to garner much in the way of attention.

That's fine with me - I can live without stories of the Rapture, government taking our guns away, welfare queens, communist (muslim now?) menace, etc... I'm comfortable in my little liberal shell.

>90%+ are favorable to green energy, solar energy, wind energy - and Anti-Coal/Carbon products.

I wasn't aware that renewable energy was a partisan issue.

There are a handful of partisan issues that are attached to renewable energy -- things like government funding (particularly through the stimulus bill), related allegations of favoritism and corruption, and climate change related regulation (cap & trade, etc.)

For example, a handful of "green energy" companies received stimulus funding and later went bankrupt; this has led to a great deal of partisan bickering over whether Obama is wasting taxpayer money, or whether we should leave it to private enterprise to figure out renewable energy. So while the concept of renewable energy is non-partisan, policies/discussion relating to funding and regulation of renewable energy can be quite partisan.

EDIT: http://www.people-press.org/2011/11/10/partisan-divide-over-... - see the chart near the bottom, titled "Partisan Gaps over Energy Policies".

I would say something similar is the case with respect to many other issues that sound non-partisan, like national parks -- peripheral issues like government funding and restrictions on private enterprise (logging on federal land?) can lead to a fairly significant partisan divide, even on issues that don't seem controversial.

Bias is like local accents when speaking - Everyone but "this.you" has one, and everyone else's is weird/wrong.

And it's as popular to civilly discuss as politics, religion, discrimination, etc.

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