Newsweek's Makeover

León Krauze has seen the future of Newsweek, and he prefers its past: 

Just last week the first issue of the new Newsweek appeared. Jon Meacham, the editor of the magazine, promised a few months ago that the redesign would turn Newsweek into a magazine with with lower circulation planned for a public more interested in analysis than information; a public willing to pay more and, maybe, subscribe with greater loyalty. To achieve it, Meacham would have had to offer an authentically innovative and aggressive project. Unfortunately, now that I have the first issue in my hands, all I see (as a reader for years) is a confused magazine. The equilibrium between image and text has been lost. In contrast to a magazine with the depth and beauty of Foreign Policy, Meacham and his team seem to have confused depth with boredom. The design of the opinion pages, for example, seem like a disaster to me. With a multicolor backdrop that is neither encouraging nor illustrative, the texts from the Newsweek analysts remind me of a paid insert. Even the interview with Barack Obama --evidently a piece of resistance from Meacham-- is designed with too much air and a dryness that is frightening. Ultimately, sadly, this new Newsweek seems like one more step toward the grave rather than a deep breath after the pain. 

I couldn't agree more about the Take, as I believe the analysis section is called. The six straight pages of opinion pieces from Zakaria and company just didn't work. It struck me as something like Foreign Affairs in the sense that it's several thousand words of analysis with little visual relief, but, because it's six separate pieces instead of one, it lacks the depth that makes ploughing through an article from Foreign Affairs or its competitors worth the effort. Of course, Meacham's task is Herculean, but squeezing an expanded op-ed page into a newsweekly is a step in the wrong direction.