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With Redesign of Time, Sentences Run Forward
Having just turned 84, Time magazine is coming out with a new look and editorial approach on Friday. They've come up with the unsinkable redesign...  In: A cleaner, simpler design, heavy on labels at the top of each page and the names of its columnists in World War II size type the better to brand with.Richard Stengel, Times new managing editor, said the inverted syntax would vanish from the Milestones section, where it still crops up in obituaries, as in: Died. Of pneumonia. I prefer the simpler: "Croaked. Lungs gave out." Henry Luce may be rolling over in his grave over this, he said of Times co-founder. But it had outlasted its usefulness. True it possibly is. That Luce talked like Yoda no evidence exists.
 Still, he said, Luce might like some of the changes, including the reintroduction of distinct sections. The iconic cover is still recognizably Time, with its posterlike presentation of a central image showcased inside a red border. But the familiar Time logo is a bit smaller, to make room for three or four teaser boxes across the top. The redesign is the latest step in a major retrenchment meant to uproot the magazine from the perception of it as a weekly report (meaning old news) to one that is more timeless, with the hope of staying relevant in a 24/7 news cycle with its Web site, time.com.If you only come out once a week then it's pretty logical to cover last week's news. It's easier to assemble and analyze than next week's news. There is a certain value to having the high spots presented in once place and perhaps made some sense of. A simple regurgitation, though, doesn't become interesting until a few years have gone by. The alternative would be for Time to do a reassessment of events that occurred twenty or thirty years ago, where the hindsight is starting to become clear. That would mean a smaller audience, however. Since Mr. Stengels appointment last spring, Time has cut back its circulation to 3.25 million, from 4 million. The move eliminated copies that were going to places like doctors offices where they were not necessarily wanted, and it reduced the rates that advertisers had to pay. Doctors' offices are a perfectly legitimate place for Time. Why not put copies where people are sitting still for extended periods? Time also switched its publication date to Friday from Monday, cut 50 people from its staff, shut its bureaus in Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles, and invested more in its Web site. Monday's a more logical publication day, since readership drops with the weekend. Why do your assembly when things are busiest? Cutting 50 people from staff is a false savings, unless they're pure deadwood. Staff is what produces a publication, so when you cut staff you're cutting your productivity. Without bureaus in major cities they'll depend on stringers for news. Welcome to the wonderful world of AP. Time's website is a piggishly slow loader that presents a pageful of liberal hackneys. I hope the website redesign is still in the future, because if not they didn't get their money's worth. It further saved costs by contracting with more columnists, who, as established writers, are less expensive than full-time staff journalists. That means more opinion and less hard news, more comfy jobs for the established and fewer places for newcomers to shine. They're doing Walter Winchell, rather than Ernie Pyle. The new design allows the magazine to highlight these columnists and shift its editorial approach from a single omniscient voice to multiple well-known voices (more like its rival Newsweek). Times columnists include Joe Klein, Michael Kinsley and William Kristol. Notice they're not mining the blogs for people who can write? Not even liberals who can write. If they're not doing hard news they'd be better off with Mickey Kaus than with Michael Kinsley. If I had a bunch of money and I was putting out a national news magazine, I'd try and recruit people like Jeff Goldstein, from Protein Wisdom, area experts like Dr. Zin from Regime Change Iran or Donald Sensing, who's sui generis, or our own Chuck Simmins, real reporters like Michael Yon and Bill Roggio, along with certifiably good established writers like Mark Steyn or Michelle Malkin or Lileks, if only to fill out the tedium of Joe Klein week after week. Those just popped in at the top of my mind. There are dozens of others, starting with Steven den Beste and going through Meryl Yourish, or Denny Wilson when he's on a roll. Not only would you end up with a magazine that was readable, you'd get one that was difficult to put down. And there are so many good writers to choose among you wouldn't even be running the same rehashes every week. Predictability is what kills publications. Helping to streamline the look of the magazine is the elimination of most of its custom editions, sought by advertisers who wanted to reach narrow slices of readers based on geography and demographics. In some weeks, Time printed as many as 30,000 (yes, 30,000) different versions of the magazine, said Edward R. McCarrick, the publisher, adding that it was not worth the effort. "Y'know, Herb, I think we should eliminate rank stupidity from our operation!" "Gosh, Bob! That's certainly a bold approach!" Mr. Stengel said he sought inspiration for the redesign in back issues of Time that are bound and locked in a closet near his office on the 24th floor of the Time & Life Building in Midtown Manhattan. The original Time magazine divided the world into sections, he said. It was like a TV dinner, where you had your dessert course, your main course, your vegetable course. Kinda like Rantburg's layout, in fact. He said he would replicate that experience, with the new magazine clearly demarcated into something like chapters, each beginning on a right-hand page and taking the reader through Briefing, Arts and Ideas. Kinda like Rantburg's layout, only dumb... They will include yet more well-known writers who have what Mr. Stengel calls branded expertise in subjects like law and health. But not really good writers who'll make people want to part with the inflated prices that have been making their way to Time's cover. Whether these changes can save the magazine remains to be seen. Or, as Mr. Gibbs wrote in 1936 in The New Yorker: Where it all will end, knows God! Posted by: Fred 2007-03-13 |
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