Time Magazine

The Purpose

Time Magazine isn't particularly good. But it's not trying to be the best news magazine in the country, it is trying to be the biggest.

To be the best news magazine, you'd have to get people the facts fast, and have highly objective analysis from people with deep domain expertise. You wouldn't care about public opinion.

To be the biggest news magazine, you have different goals. You have to get the facts right, and you need some commentary, but you really don't want to offend anyone.

Also, you need covers that get people's attention.

If you subscribe to Time Magazine, you'll notice that a lot of covers feature babies or naked people (tastefully posed, of course).

How To Handle Stupid People

When you are going for large circulation, you have to be sensitive to any opinion held by a majority, whether that opinion flies in the face of the facts or not. If you pick a contentious issue that involves stupid but commonly-held opinions, you'll notice that Time gives careful attention to both sides of the argument and doesn't take a position of its own. I won't name any directly, but you can probably think of two or three popular debates on your own. Check their coverage in Time and you'll see what I mean.

For instance, suppose an opinion poll found that 68% of Americans believed the Earth was the center of the universe, and the Sun orbited us rather than the other way around. What would news magazines say?

The Atlantic: focused on the backstory.

The Economist: they would have a wittier headline than this.

Time Magazine,

You get the idea.

My Letter to the Editor

In 2002, Time Magazine had a weekly issue devoted to the upcoming Star Wars movie (the Attack of the Clones--was that the 2nd or 3rd prequel?).

In addition to several pages of coverage (including plot synopses, interviews with Lucas and others, and a history of the Star Wars universe) they also dedicated the cover of the magazine to the film.

It was another in a long string of escapist covers. They had previously run several with babies and a "health" issue that of course had more naked people on the cover. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for naked people on magazine covers, but there were other noteworthy news items going on in the world that week.

The most important news event in April 2002.

For some reason, the sycophantic coverage of one of the 21st century's most over-hyped movies pushed me over the edge. I finally wrote a Letter to the Editor:

April 24, 2002 Time Magazine Letters Time & Life Building Rockefeller Center New York, NY 10020 To the Editor: I love the Yoda cover! After your latest run of babies and half-dressed young women, some people had said that you were avoiding the ugliness of real life. A big, hairy close-up of Yoda will certainly silence those critics! And thank you for taking the time to examine the new Star Wars movie. What with the war in Afghanistan, Israeli-Palestinian clashes, and collapsing economy in Japan, I'm sure many moviegoers were unaware of the release of "The Attack of the Clones." The plot synopses were also very helpful. Lucas' storylines vary so much from movie to movie that I find it hard to keep up. It's refreshing to see the nation's most-subscribed publication rise from the drudgery of journalism and get back to good old-fashioned marketing. Don't let the U.N. mission to Jenin next week take up too much space. I expect to see Elmo on the cover! Sincerely, [my name and contact information]

Not my best effort. If I had it to do over, I'd remove the sentence about marketing: the letter is more effective without it.

They didn't run my letter. Apparently I didn't make the cut. But I noticed that they did run letters by people thanking them for not showing a picture of the news. They had several letters that thanked them for the escape--perhaps they had received several complaints about the Star Wars coverage, and wanted to show the complainers that some readers appreciated it? And the next week's issue didn't have Elmo on the cover. So maybe someone read my letter after all.

Since then I've mostly calmed down, realized they are just trying to maximize their circulation, and not gotten excited about their magazine covers.

Until this week's issue.

The June 19 Cover

The June 19, 2006 edition of Time Magazine features a simple cover with no text other than the word "TIME". The face of al-Zarqawi floats on a white background, with a big red "X" across it.

The most tasteless cover of 2006?

At first, I thought it was just an amazingly tasteless cover, easily the worst I'd seen all year, if not the decade.

I later discovered that this is a "tradition", as you can see from the collage of covers in the Time Magazine wiki entry . Whenever a "world villian" dies, Time likes to picture their face with a big red X through it.

It is tasteless, even if it is a tradition. I can see that this sort of cover played well in the 40's, but not now.

[I'm no al-Zarqawi fan. Terrorist leaders need to be hunted down. But putting a big red X through someone's face when they are killed is a pretty big value judgement, especially considering this is someone we killed with no trial, and with a lot of collateral damage (several other men and women were also in the house when it was obliterated). You'd think that the world's exporter of democracy would promote the use of trial-by-jury, but bombs are easier. In any case, I'm not the arbiter of who deserves to live and die, and neither is Time.]

There will be no Letter to the Editor this time. The people who perpetrated this cover knew what they were doing, probably had long debates in a conference room discussing exactly these points, and opted to run the cover anyway. I'm sure Time has smart, sensitive people at its helm, but they have a job to do. Circulation is king.

Editor Leaves

Coincidentally, the June 19th issue was also the final issue for the current Managing Editor of Time (James Kelly). He displayed 40 covers that had special meaning for him. I noticed that none of them featured babies, naked women, or Star Wars. But he did list the al-Zarqawi cover.

Why subscribe to Time?

Okay, so I don't respect Time Magazine for its reporting. So why do I subscribe to it?

Because, in pursuit of its single-minded goal of circulation, it keeps its thumb on the pulse of the country. If you want to know where the center is, you read Time. Especially for a geek like me, who doesn't watch TV, it's handy to have Time around to know where popular culture is this week.

So I have to give props to Time for that.

Update on 22 August 2006

A few issues later, there were letters to the editor about the cover.

One letter stated the obvious: this was a tasteless cover.

But Time had cleverly placed another letter just before that one, which stated: "I'm sure you'll get a bunch of letters from sissies that will say the cover is tasteless."

At least they know their audience. And as usual, I read through most of the issue.

Appendix

Whenever I write a blog entry, I usually do a bunch of web surfing for research. I'm sure you are familiar with web searches: it takes a while to find the query that gets you the results you're looking for. Sometimes, the intermediate results are fun to look through.

For instance, it took me a while to find the subscription base for Time Magazine. Did you know it was ranked around number 10 for subscriptions in the US? I would have guessed it was a bit higher.

Here are the top ten magazines, ranked by circulation (from the US Media Landscape Site ) as of 2004:

1) AARP Bulletin (22 million)

2) AARP Magazine (21 million)

3) Reader's Digest (11 million)

4) TV Guide (9 million)

5) Better Homes and Gardens (8 million)

6) National Geographic (7 million)

7) Good Housekeeping (5 million)

8) Family Circle (5 million)

9) Woman's Day (4 million)

10) Time (4 million)

A Google search also tuned me into an Amazon.com page that lists best sellers indexed by name. You can find the top-selling magazines that start with the letter "W"--my favorite is Wild Animal Baby . According to reviewers, one of the virtues of Wild Animal Baby is that "it is less of a projectile than your average picture book," which is also true of Time magazine.

Another site, State of the News Media , notes the subscription base for The Economist (roughly 500,000) and Atlantic Monthly (440,000). These are classified as "Non-Traditional Titles", as opposed to the "Big Three" of Time, Newsweek, and US News.

2006 Person of the Year

Surprisingly, Time went a step further than I expected and produced what is even a more ridiculed cover: the 2006 person of the year. The Person of 2006 was "you." What a crap cop-out.

The 2006 Person of the Year: You!

The Person of the Year is a big deal, a chance for Time to focus the nation's attention on a person or issue worth thinking about. But they abdicated that responsibility in 2006.

Apparently, changing consumer behavior was the big deal in 2006. Perhaps Time is worried (like many other periodicals) that as more people flock to the web for news and entertainment, printed periodicals will suffer. Certainly the 2006 person of the year cover isn't going to increase subscription.

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