nwkarchivist:

Recalling The Death of Life, 40 Years Ago

Newsweek, December 18, 1972

Nate Silver: “This is the closest that we’ve come in a week or so to one candidate clearly having ‘won’ the day in the tracking polls — and it was Mr. Obama.”

Effective immediately, in light of your latest foolish attempt at seeming important, we [at Newsweek & The The Daily Beast] will ignore you and your hot air for the foreseeable future—or, at the very least, until after the Nov. 6 election.

A letter to Donald Trump. Reblog if you’ll join our Trump-cott.

Obama’s lead is narrow — narrow enough that the polling might well be wrong and Romney could win. But he is leading, his lead is not declining, and the widespread perception that Romney is pulling ahead is Romney’s campaign suckering the press corps with a confidence game.

Jonathan Chait provides a “slap in the face.” 

newsbeastlabs:

Tracking the presidential groundgame

As the two presidential campaigns launch into their final throws, we wanted to see who had the biggest footprint of campaign headquarters across the country. The map above ran with the resulting story showing Obama with a large advantage, especially in swing states. We thought getting from idea to map / chart would be as easy as checking the candidates’ websites or calling their press offices to request a full list. Not quite.

Finding Romney’s offices

Governor Romney’s campaign didn’t get back to our requests so we dug into their website. Romney only had volunteer offices in 16 states, each of which has a web page and a map showing office locations. Here’s Ohio’s. The data that powers the map is visible if you look at the Javascript files that power it, so we copied the data sixteen states into one file and saved it. They were in JSON file format — but more on that later.

Finding Obamas’s offices

President Obama has offices in many more states than Romney so going state by state is more of a hassle and his campaign’s website doesn’t have the same convenient state-by-state maps. Instead, you input your zip code and it gives you a map of all locations within forty miles of you. 

Needless to say, getting a comprehensive list by canvassing the country in 40 mile chunks was out of the question. Digging again into the javascript that powers the website (aside: the Obama website has some slick ASCII art in their source code), their volunteer center finder works by sending out a query that looks like this http://offices.barackobama.com/postal_code/10011/ with your zip code making up the those last five digits. If you put that in your browser and hit return you’ll see the centers closest to the Daily Beast offices in Manhattan…. (Read more)

We’re excited to show-off our newest Tumblr: NewsBeast Labs! As we write in the description, we’ll be giving you a peak at notes and images from our ever-growing digital newsroom. So if you’re into journalism, maps, data, pretty colors, etc. you should definitely follow. 

Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscription and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast.

Tina Brown & Baba Shetty on the Newsweek of the future.

This email from Tina hit staff inboxes a little before 7:00am this morning. Newsweek’s going all digital. Last edition will be the December 31st issue. Ch-ch-changes.

To: All Staff

We are announcing this morning an important development at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Newsweek will transition to an all-digital format in early 2013. As part of this transition, the last print edition in the U.S. will be our December 31st issue. Meanwhile, Newsweek will expand its rapidly growing tablet and online presence, as well as its successful global partnerships and events business.

Newsweek Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscriptions and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast.

Four years ago we launched The Daily Beast. Two years later, we merged our business with the iconic Newsweek magazine - which The Washington Post Company had sold to Dr. Sidney Harman. Since the merger, both The Daily Beast and Newsweek have continued to post and publish distinctive journalism and have demonstrated explosive online growth in the process. The Daily Beast now attracts more than 15 million unique visitors a month, a 70 percent increase in the past year alone - a healthy portion of this traffic generated each week by Newsweek’s strong original journalism.

At the same time, our business has been increasingly affected by the challenging print advertising environment, while Newsweek’s online and e-reader content has built a rapidly growing audience through the Apple, Kindle, Zinio and Nook stores as well on The Daily Beast. Tablet-use has grown rapidly among our readers and with it the opportunity to sustain editorial excellence through swift, easy digital distribution - a superb global platform for our award-winning journalism.  By year’s end, tablet users in the United States alone are expected to exceed 70 million, up from 13 million just two years ago.

Currently, 39 percent of Americans say they get their news from an online source, according to a Pew Research Center study released last month. In our judgment, we have reached a tipping point at which we can most efficiently and effectively reach our readers in all-digital format. This was not the case just two years ago. It will increasingly be the case in the years ahead.  

It is important that we underscore what this digital transition means and, as importantly, what it does not. We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it. We remain committed to Newsweek and to the journalism that it represents. This decision is not about the quality of the brand or the journalism, that is as powerful as ever. It is about the challenging economics of print publishing and distribution.

Newsweek is produced by a gifted and tireless team of professionals who have been offering brilliant work consistently throughout a tough period of ownership transition and media disruption. The inexorable move to an all-digital Newsweek comes with an unfortunate reality. Regrettably we anticipate staff reductions and the streamlining of our editorial and business operations both here in the United States and internationally. More details on the new organizational structure will be shared individually in the coming weeks and months.

We realize news of a big change like this will be unsettling. We wish to reassure you the transition is well planned, extremely mindful of the unavoidable impact on our staff and respectful of our readers, advertisers and business partners.

There will be an all-staff town hall meeting at 11am on the editorial side of our floor to answer your questions and address your concerns. 

Tina Brown & Baba Shetty  

There’s also a piece from Tina co-bylined with our new CEO, Baba, up on the website: A Turn of the Page for Newsweek.

The future of the tabloids’ print editions: things you’ve already seen on the Internet! Didn’t expect them to be so brutally honest.

Barack Obama, moments ago: ”I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency that was declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.”

Tony Dokoupil, the author of this week’s story about Dr. Peter Bourne, the self-described “first drug czar” in the Carter administration (who left after being accused of snorting cocaine at a party thrown by none other than NORML), sent along this little excerpt from his reporting for the tumblr. Dr. Bourne basically claims to be the inspiration for the Jason Bourne.

Exhibit:

Newsweek: Come clean Peter G. Bourne: Are you the inspiration for the Bourne Identity?

Peter G. Bourne: Yes, I am. When it was first published [in 1980] I thought, you know, this is pretty amazing that he has taken my name, which is not a terribly common name…Then I read the book and there were so many parallels with my own life and Jason Bourne in the book that I thought he must have copied this. Then I saw an interview with Robert Ludlum. They asked him, you know, where do you get the names? And he said, oh, I just read the Washington Post and I see a name and I just take it. Then at some point my father actually met Robert Ludlum and asked him where he got the name from—and he said it was from my name in the Washington Post.

Newsweek: How do you feel about Matt Damon playing you?

Peter G. Bourne: That’s all fine with me. The problem I have is when I go through pass port control people make some joke about it. “I better be careful with you,” they say. It gets a bit tired after a while.