Mar 31, 2008 04:33 PM
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The Newsweek buyouts have happened and they're more extensive than originally predicted. Let us remember that a buyout is a far better fate than layoff. These fallen writers are in a better place now. A place with The Golden Girls and The Price Is Right. After the jump, a bit more about those who have left Newsweek for a retired journalist heaven.
David Gates
Newsweek isn't known for its prose, but David Gates's style was the exception. His review of Colson Whitehead's novel Apex Hides the Hurt had intern Alexis at hello. His first novel Jernigan, received a rave from the hard-to-please Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, "The minute he starts talking, Peter Jernigan, the narrator of David Gates's astonishing first novel, grabs you by the lapels and compels you to listen to the sad-funny-tragic story of his life." Newsweek has few other writers with such style, and he will be missed.
David Ansen
Since January 26, 1958, Newsweek film critic David Ansen has been counting every movie he seen. By October 29, 2007, he was up to 7,714, and counting. A member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, National Society of Film Critics and New York Film Critics Circle, Ansen will have to reach 10,000 on his own.
Cathleen McGuigan
A graduate of Brown and Harvard, Cathleen McGuigan is an adjunct professor at the Columbia Journalism School. Her 1986 description of Soho artist as "America's last pioneers, urban nomads in search of wide open interior spaces" for Newsweek is a Bartleby notable quote.
Harold Shain
Harold Shain was a business man. The former president and chief operating officer of Newsweek in March 1998 left the position to become the chief executive of Newsweek Budget Travel just last October. He couldn't have known then that only a few months later he would be accepting a buyout from the Washington Post company.
Alexis Gelber
Alexis Gelber was literally married to Newsweek. That's an approximation of the headline of her Times wedding announcement to Mark Whitaker: "Alexis Gelber Married To Newsweek Writer. Gelber was also a judge on Barnard's annual writing contest for 11th-grade girls in New York City public high schools in 1999.
Nancy Cooper
Senior editor Nancy Cooper took us into Y2K, editing the Newsweek's news section on 2000 from 1997 until the aughts.
George Hackett
If there's one man who embodied the general interest spirit of Newsweek, it was George Hackett. The senior editor worked in the Science & Technology, oversaw the coverage of the Salt Lake City Games, edited Perspectives and My Turn sections. He also started 1994, he initiated Focus: On Technology, which ironically centered on the rise of the internet, which would be one cause of his buyout.
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