Newsweek is dead. Long live the Beast!

By Frank Moraes

The Daily Beast reports that Newsweek is going to stop producing its print version. Tina Brown, one of the top generals in the war to destroy our culture, puts a positive spin on this. They "[a]re transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it."

That is a load off my mind. After all, without Newsweek, where would I turn for Niall Ferguson's latest passel of lies about the president? Or tripe about Muslim Rage by Ferguson's wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali? Or the latest news about the afterlife and other drug-induced hallucinations? You can imagine my relief!

Newsweek 's problems are not the fault of of Tina Brown. Newsweek has been irrelevant for, I don't know, my entire life. (But I've heard that it totally rocked during the Great Depression!) Brown was just the last desperate gasp of a magazine that has nothing to offer. I can image what the meetings were like. "I know the word 'news' is in the title of our magazine, but maybe we could become more pop culture; I know: let's get that chick from Vanity Fair!"

I'm not clear what this whole thing is about. The truth is that Newsweek already has a digital form. It's called The Daily Beast and it isn't bad (probably owing to the fact that the Newsweek folks didn't create it). So saying that Newsweek is going digital is pretty much the same thing as saying that Newsweek is going away.

To coin a new bumper sticker: if you care that Newsweek is dead, you haven't been paying attention.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)