“People who are interested in politics, who are interested in the world, who are interested in business, and who are interested in culture both high and low whether it’s Lionel Trilling or American Idol,” he offered. “I think it’s largely serious-minded people, but people who don’t take themselves too seriously.”
Finally, he broke it down. He wants readers who are interested in “what I’m interested in.” That is to say, Newsweek isn’t going to appeal to people who substitute newspaper reading with magazine reading; it isn’t going appeal to your average soccer mom sitting in the dentist’s office. Nothing about the new magazine looks inviting to someone who isn’t already interested in the news. At last, the newsmagazine as it should always have been: Meacham, in print.
In two months, the magazine will cut its rate base from 2.6 million to 1.9 million, and by January next year it’ll hit 1.5 million. The price of the magazine on the newsstand will be raised to $5.95.
“We’re putting out a magazine that’s liberated from an ancient cultural impulse here—to make sure we took note of all the major events of a given week,” said Mr. Meacham.
“You go back to [editors] Oz Elliot and Ed Kosner and Rick Smith and Maynard Parker, and we all worked from that fundamental template,” said Mark Whitaker, Mr. Meacham’s predecessor who is now the Washington bureau chief of NBC, and who said he thought Mr. Meacham a brilliant writer. “We changed things, or updated things along the way, but Jon and Tom Ascheim, the new business leader, are saying it has to change now and become a very different magazine. Jon will narrow the focus to a front-of-the-book topic with politics and history and religion, and Tom Ascheim has basically said mass doesn’t work for Newsweek anymore. It’s a much more of a radical rethinking of the magazine than previous editors have done.”
WHEN MR. MEACHAM won the Pulitzer a few weeks before, the Washington Post Company, which owns Newsweek, ran an ad in The New York Times, The Post and Newsweek that read: “Jon Meacham, A Biography. 1969 BORN Chattanooga, Tennessee. 1995 WRITER Newsweek Magazine. 2006 EDITOR Newsweek Magazine. MONDAY APRIL 20, 2009 WINNER 2009 Pulitzer Prize.”
It’s a Meachamy sort of joke. And it’s the underlying premise of both his self-presentation and his new magazine: bursting with merit. To sell this Newsweek, he’s got to make all of Washington root for it. First, all of Washington has to root for him.
“I think I spent 38 minutes at Tammy’s and 32 minutes at the Vanity Fair party, which is just about right,” said Mr. Meacham in his office, with a sly smile, looking back at the weekend.
Consider his peers at that incredibly intimate and high-wattage Vanity Fair and Bloomberg after-party at the mansion of the French ambassador: Time’s Rick Stengel, Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter and The Atlantic’s James Bennet held court on the back patio for hours, well past midnight. Mr. Meacham worked the room for 32 minutes and was gone.
“Jon understands how to reach out to a broader crowd,” said Evan Thomas. “Maybe he didn’t get Natalie Portman, but he gets the notion that there are lots of smart people out there, not just cool people. He’s mercifully free from the in-crowd. He’s not burdened by the in-crowd.”
“He doesn’t necessarily have to appeal to the Vanity Fair–Bloomberg party at the White House Correspondents Dinner,” he continued. “He grew up in Tennessee, you know. He has a feel for a broader audience than the Upper West Side of New York. He’s at home in the world. He doesn’t crave being in the in-crowd.”
At an event last Saturday morning, Mr. Meacham was speaking to a group of advertisers at the Willard Hotel, which is a stone’s throw from the White House.
Mr. Meacham was standing behind a podium before a crowd of about 20 people, and spoke about Mr. Obama and the future of journalism. One person wondered what Mr. Obama’s “Profile of Courage” was at this moment.
“I don’t know yet, but every president, every great president, will have one,” he said.
“Every once in a while in American history, man and moment meet.”
Note: A slightly different version of this article appeared in May 18 editions of The New York Observer and online. This version adds some new material.
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