An American institution died recently, and it was hidden so well that nobody really noticed. Sometime in November, US News and World Report, stopped publishing as a weekly newsmagazine. I know it was to the right of Newsweek and TIME, but it tried to cut out the bullshit. It will be missed.
IN 1933, David Lawrence, a conservative columnist, decided that he someone had to keep a jaundiced eye on the Roosevelt Administraiton. So he decided to publish a national weekly newspaper called the United States News. It was a broadsheet and tried to be as serious as possible. TIME magazine was in the process of changing from a print version of "The DAILY SHOW" to a serious digest of the news, and "News-Week" was still a mess, design-wise. After a few years of success US News turned itself into a magazine, and just after World War II Lawrence merged it with his foreign affairs weekly "World Report".
With Television having only three networks and the internet not open to the public until the 1990s, Time, Newsweek and US News were de regeur for the news junkie. "Life," "Look", and the "Saturday Evening Post" were fluffier, although they could be substantial every now and again. But in the '70s, the big picture magazines folded, came back and folded yet again, Time, US News and Newsweek kept on chugging along.
US News prided itself on being bullshit free. Sure the columnists were mostly Republicans, but they didn't talk about movie starts or anything fluffy. Just the issues of the day. They kept the design from the 1940s well into the 1980s. While Newsweek got snarkier, and Time tried to turn itself into a smaller version of what Life had been, US News kept chugging along. That is until Zuckerman came along.
Until last year, Zuckerman's version of US News was rather good. It's annual Best Universities list was useful, but the World Report part of the magazine began to atrophy. "The Economist" became available, and most of the news from overseas was ignored. (I would love to have seen the international edition of Time and Newsweek available in the US). Sure, in December, all three would go on vacation (coverage of the 2004 tsunami suffered) so I didn't really notice that US News just vanished.
Well it didn't just "vanish." There was a "monthly" edition with no real content, just a few editorials that was in the back of racks in Barnes and Noble and Borders. I saw it in January, but not in February. The stupid squareback "Secrets of the Bible" thing is still on the stands, and I guess it's because nobody's going to by the damn thing.
But an American institution is gone. I know there's a web version that's still there, but it's different. Who's going to want to pay for something you can pretty much get for free. I'm talking about the news, not "Washington Whispers" or "Periscope." Plus, you just cannot lie on a couch and read something on the internet. I know they have kindle and everything, but a real magazine is something made of paper.
US News might have been Crysler to Time and Newsweek's Ford and GM, but it will definitely be missed.