News Magazines

Historically, people in the United States have relied upon three major weekly news magazines: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. Time was founded in 1923 by Briton Haden and Henry Luce and was the first weekly news magazine in the United States. Time's tone is lighter than that of the other two and heavily covers celebrities, entertainment, and pop culture. It often attempts to tell its stories through people and for many years has featured single individuals on its cover. Time's “Person of the Year” is its most famous feature. Each year the magazine recognizes in a cover story an individual or group of individuals who have had the largest impact upon that year. Newsweek, founded in 1933 by Thomas J. C. Martin, has attempted to distinguish itself from Time by introducing signed columns and avoiding the light language and celebration of celebrity practiced by Time. Newsweek is noted for taking a lead role in the 1950s concerning racial tensions in the nation. U.S. News & World Report was founded in 1933 (as U.S. News) by David Lawrence and later merged with World Report in 1948. It was marketed as a more serious-minded magazine that focused on more sober matters than Time or Newsweek. The magazine began publishing a list of college and university rankings in 1983, and that list has proved controversial.

Many research studies have investigated the political leanings and impact of news magazines. Some have suggested that Time and Newsweek have a some-what liberal or left-leaning political orientation, while U.S. News & World Report tends to be more conservative. Nonetheless, some research has also shown that readers of news magazines have higher levels of political knowledge.

[Page 502]All three major news magazines have witnessed a decrease in circulation over the past several years and have fallen to pre-1988 levels. Further, readers of news magazines have tended to become older, as many younger people use new media outlets for news sources. Young citizens are turning to news magazines less frequently, but the distribution of news magazine content on the Internet has increased its availability and attraction to a wider, younger audience. Economic stratification of readers appears to be occurring as well. Wealthier individuals are now reading news magazines. Finally, the number of staff members at traditional news magazines has been declining for several years.

However, several nontraditional news magazines are seeing growth. The Week, for example, founded in 2001, brings a new approach to the genre by having its editors cull the weekly news and then provide a condensed summary. The Week's format seems more likely to appeal to a younger, more Internet-savvy reader who is accustomed to a shorter, shallower version of events. Further, niche news magazines like The New Yorker and The Economist are growing in circulation. Indeed, the longer, news and cultural format of the New Yorker and shorter, condensed version offered in The Week seem to fill niches that traditional formats are unable to meet.

In Europe, however, many news magazines remain important in the political opinion process. Magazines like The Economist in Britain, Stern and Der Spiegel in Germany, L'Express and Le Nouvel Observateur in France, and their counterparts in other countries include politics frequently as headline stories.

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