"Weaknews" For Sale

I toyed with "Newsweek, R.I.P." as a headline instead, because the weekly news magazine is dead, "...morally, ethically, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably, and reliably- dead!"

A dwindling audience due to Left-wing bias aside, in a country where even those counted by the government as living below the poverty line enjoy easy access to both cable/satellite television and the Internet, the days of successful mass print news, balanced or not, are numbered.

Over the course of a career in the Air Force, my family and I have lived in many different places across the country and we have always had the local paper delivered to our home. While no one would have expected us to be as interested in the local news as the natives, we still wanted to know when and where the sales, the movie schedule, the weather forecast, etc. But no more. Since we moved back to North Carolina about three years ago, only my wife reads the local paper, The Mount Airy News, and even she reads it on-line.

Don't misunderstand. I find no joy in reporting this. I'm a dinosaur who still enjoys some familiar, tactile pleasure when holding paper of some kind in my hands as I read. It also, for no doubt snobbish reasons, makes me feel smarter than and superior to the herd. (It's easier on my eyes as well.)

Nevertheless, look for the "For Sale" sign currently posted in front of Newsweek's HQ to be replaced in short order by a tombstone. And it won't be long before the spreading epidemic makes victims also of Time, The Washington Post, and even the venerable, but definitely graying lady, The New York Times. "She's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead!"