“MarketWatch First Take: Not your grandfather's Newsweek”

MarketWatch First Take: Not your grandfather's Newsweek

Posted: 23 Aug 2010 10:41 AM PDT

By MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- This is not your grandfather's Newsweek.

Sidney Harman, poised to take the reins of the troubled newsweekly, gets it, all right.

Based on an interview in The Wall Street Journal, Harman, 92, understands that Newsweek is in dire straits, financially and journalistically. Harman, who has agreed to take over Newsweek from the Washington Post /quotes/comstock/13*!wpo/quotes/nls/wpo (WPO 368.78, +21.10, +6.07%) , has enthusiasm to burn, too. Read Wall Street Journal interview.

But Harman seems to be short on what really matters: determining how Newsweek can regain its relevance.

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Under Editor Jon Meacham, who took charge in 2004 and has said will be stepping down soon, Newsweek began to fall behind Richard Stengel's Time /quotes/comstock/13*!twx/quotes/nls/twx (TWX 30.11, -0.20, -0.66%) in relevance. For decades, the two had staged a widely followed rivalry. Meacham seemed intent on re-casting Newsweek as a version of the droll and analytical Economist. It came off, however, as a knockoff of a winning formula.

The key will be Harman's choice as Meacham's successor. The new editor must have a plan, on day one, to give Newsweek something it has lacked for a few years: an identity. It can no longer be regarded as a poor cousin to Time, the Economist or anybody else.

Newsweek must establish excellence, right from the start. If it needed to consult a role model, it wouldn't have far to go. Look at Slate, another Washington Post-owned vehicle. Slate boasts immediacy and impact -- and it is newsy, to boot.

The best of the new breed of online magazines -- Huffington Post and the Daily Beast, among them, do what successful publications have always accomplished. They give the reader an "experience." News, opinion and analysis have all become commoditized in today's media.

Note to Mr. Harman: What separates one or another from the pack in a meaningful way is a distinct voice. Let's hope you can find one and breathe come life into a once-great America publishing institution.

-- Jon Friedman

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Monday, August 23, 2010