The majority of these titles are still making money, due primarily to upscale subscriber bases of influential people. (Both Roll Call nor CQ place the majority of their online content behind a paywall.)

Dear Colleague,

I am writing to let you know that today we announced that Roll Call, part of the London-based Economist Group, has agreed to acquire Congressional Quarterly (CQ) to form a new company to be called CQ-Roll Call Group.

The combination of Roll Call and CQ will create the largest and most experienced newsroom covering Congress and official Washington, making CQ-Roll Call Group the clear leader in providing timely, accurate and unbiased premium journalism about Congress and Washington politics and policy.

As we complete this transaction, I want to assure you, there will be no changes to your Roll Call service. We will continue to publish our print and online editions with the same commitment to keeping you informed.

If at any time you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Peter Cherukuri
Publisher
Roll Call

Here's why.

• Reading The Economist makes you look smart: Anecdotal evidence points to a high incidence of on subway interactions amongst Economist readers in which fellow commuters either nod approvingly upon eye contact or initiate conversation. Sometimes aforementioned conversation includes, "I heard people only read The Economist to look smart," but also sometimes concludes, "You look smart."
• Reading The Economist makes you smart: The Economist is a weekly news magazine that avoids the insecure magazine trend found in Time, Newsweek et al of presenting information in graphically driven gotcha tidbits. Instead of simply a lede and a joke and cutting out—a formula borrowed from blogs where it works well and belongs—The Economist gives a sobering if visually unexciting take on the world's events.
• No Bylines If you're like me, you hate Joel Stein. There's no Joel Stein at The Economist. In fact, it's written entirely without bylines. The voice is consistent and there are no egos vying for recognition. Or at least none that bubble through to the readers.
• No Bullshit: An average issue of The Economist has more instances of "should" than any other magazine of comparable length and breadth. It's not afraid to prescribe action, not simply to describe the problem.
• Reading The Economist Makes You Stop Smoking: This week's Obituary of the Winston man, Alan Lander, who died recently of cancer has shaken me off cigarettes for good. (I read it this morning.)
• The Covers: Unremittingly bleak and brilliant. It's never felt so good to be so depressed.
• The Articles: In this week's edition, there's a piece about the death of the Viewmaster (sad, myopic), how Brazilians who watch soap operas are sluttier and less fertile than those who don't, and a review of a book about life in the Warsaw ghetto. So soap operas, extinct toys and the Holocaust all in one magazine. Where else can you get that?

Our expectation for Newsweek has long been that it will just continue its slow slide into total irrelevance and eventual bankruptcy, clinging to a weekly news model that the internet long ago made defunct. But maybe not! Because the top editors of Newsweek are apparently acknowledging that their model is defunct, and trying something else. Namely, they're targeting a smaller, richer audience, and ending their focus on reporting on the "News" of the "Week" in favor of thinkier opinionated pieces. In other words, they're mashing up The Economist and The Atlantic with a little dash of that trademark Newsweek bullshit for people who only read for five minutes per week:

Starting in May, articles will be reorganized under four broad, new sections - one each for short takes, columnists and commentary, long reporting pieces like the cover articles, and culture - each with less compulsion to touch on the week's biggest events. A new graphic feature on the last page, "The Bluffer's Guide," will tell readers how to sound as if they are knowledgeable on a current topic, whether they are or not.

This is really the only viable path to survival for Newsweek, so we have nothing bad to say about it. Unless it has a deleterious effect on the Historical Jesus reporting, in which case, HELL. [NYT]

Just look at the examples above: "Lincoln vs Darwin"! "The Religious Case For Gay Marriage"! "Global Warning Is a Hoax*/Not really lulz ROFL"!

This is the template for the future, editor Jon "The Economist, Please Marry Me" Meacham told the Journal:

"Covers like Lincoln v. Darwin is what the redesign is all about... We are trying to be more provocative."

...Recently, Newsweek has emphasized commentary on hot-button issues, such as gay marriage, by big-name journalists like editor Jon Meacham and international editor Fareed Zakaria, as well as contributions from political operatives and academics like Michael Beschloss and Sean Wilentz.

The idea is to just kind of sit back and pontificate on the world, like The Economist, without the need for all those pricey reporters everywhere. Then elite, smart people will read the magazine, which will become a "thought leader," as anonymous Newsweekers phrased it in Folio Tuesday, and advertisers will pay a premium. Meanwhile the magazine will save on postage since it won't have to mail anything to the poors!

But of course people who fancy themselves "thought leaders" hungry for global news opinion can just order The Economist, which has way more snob appeal than Newsweek. Meanwhile confused pediatricians and dentists will stop ordering the magazine for their waiting rooms, due to the increasingly inflammatory covers; bloggers will mock the magazine for going tabloidy; and Matt Drudge will finally hire Michael Isikoff away to write for Drudge Report directly, since if you're going to do investigative journalism on behalf of a spinmeister you might as well work for the big, growing one with lots of extra money.

[via MagCulture]

Yes! Which is why, as readers, we are happy these guys from Boston have founded the Politico of international news. (It is already poaching people from Politico.) And those newsroom cutbacks may enable Global News Enterprises LLC.* to put together a pretty strong team. From an announcement in March:

The Boston Globe foreign correspondent Charles M. Sennott leaves April 4 to become executive editor and VP for Global News Enterprises LLC, a new Boston-based website that launches next year to cover international news. Other contributors to the new site will include The New York Times Magazine contributing writer Scott Anderson, Times of London bureau chief Sam Kiley, Newsweek reporter Joshua Hammer and Newsday foreign reporter Matthew McAllester. The site will be led by New England Cable News founder Philip S. Balboni.

Since then we have heard they've added Meline Toumani, formerly of the Times Magazine** as a full-time staffer.

So what does it all mean? A gaping black money hole is what Denton predicts! International news, see, is the only sort of content less attractive to advertisers than politics***. And as we have pointed out before, Politico, despite all its trumpeted success, is still something of a mystery, business model-wise.

That said, the lead investor in Global News Enterprises LLC is a guy named Amos Hostetter who made a couple billion selling his cable company to Comcast. He isn't afraid to be service-y and may just feel like, since he made all that cash in the business that brought America The Hills he might as well throw a bone to the people still struggling to engage the four brain cells we have left.

To sum up, we don't know what will happen in North Korea or what will happen to the people who will try to explain it to us.

*Yeah, it is a worse name than Federal National Mortgage Association, for sure, but maybe they will think of a cute nickname when they go live?
**And also of being very beautiful, but that's totally irrelevant except inasmuch as this is Gawker we are talking about.
***'The Economist', of course, does great, mostly because it is so fucking expensive to subscribe to. Though I sometimes worry what would happen if someone founded the Craigslist of all those "Disaster Risk Reduction Advisor" and "Organisation & Governance International Secretariat Office" Help Wanted ads they run. Ha ha ha, they could call it "Formal Encounters."

Earlier: What Is 'Politico' Up To?

The Clinton machine only exaggerated this problem. Mrs Clinton surrounded herself with familiar faces from her White House years—people like Mark Penn, her chief strategist, Terry McAuliffe, her chief fund-raiser, Howard Wolfson (one of the least helpful spokesmen this newspaper has ever encountered) and, of course, her husband.

Ouch. That is really not like them!

So now it can be told: the entire newsmedia turned against Hillary Clinton because they could not stand dealing with her communications director. Amusingly they also all hated her chief adviser Harold Ickes AND her chief strageist (slash pollster!) Mark Penn. But for some reason poor dumb Wolfson is the one they're all beating up on. Because Penn and Ickes give better quote, probably? Which is another reason Howard was a terrible flack. Sigh.

Let a thousand buck-passing stories of how the disintegration of the Clinton campaign was the fault of her coterie of incompetent aides bloom!

Full MP3 via Bellicose Studio

[Guardian]

?

All that's on the site at the moment is information about upcoming cartooning event, but the front page promises "a collaboration between The Economist and the legendary Second City comedy theatre to explore the role of humour and satire in politics."

[Economist's Art Of Satire]

Researchers "found a smoking ban increased fatal alcohol-related car accidents by 13% in a typical county containing 680,000 people. This is the equivalent of 2.5 fatal accidents (equivalent to approximately six deaths). Furthermore, drunk-driving smokers have not changed their ways over time. In areas where the ban has been in place for longer than 18 months, the increased accident rate is 19%."

Accidents in one Pennsylvania county have gone up 26% since neighboring Delaware instituted its own smoking ban in 2002. The county between non-smoking Boulder and smoky Denver? Up 40%. Clearly we should reinstitute smoking everywhere and then ban cars, nationwide. [Economist]

Some conservative critics are not happy with new standards for measuring poverty, as they could mean thousands more poor people begging them for nickels as they try to navigate the Bowery in their carriages, and beating these ragamuffin throngs back with the horsewhip may attract the negative attention of the local constabulary. But it is foolish not to count the myriad inflated cost of living expenses New York requires when figuring out which of its denizens are actually deserving of our limited supply of compassion and federal funds.

Meanwhile, those cross-pond small-L liberals at The Economist have decided on their very own standard for measuring inequality: consumption. This measure has the handy quality of making the inequality picture look really not so bad, all things (or rather, some politically motivated things) considered. Because in America, even the poor people have refrigerators. And as income inequality has risen, "consumption inequality has barely budged for several decades," according to some study. If we all have cars and TVs and 3 a.m. Chinese food, how unequal can our society even be! "A widescreen plasma television is lovely, but you do not need one to laugh at 'Shrek'." Because dead-eyed idiocy recognizes no class divide.

SO: either you're way poorer than previously thought, because your rent is ridiculous and your income is laughable, or you're perfectly well off you big baby because jeez, you have a laptop and home internet access and a cell phone and you're telling us you're impoverished?

Bloomberg Seeks New Way to Decide Who Is Poor [NYT]
Seeking a Better Measure of Inequality [WSJ]
The New (Improved) Gilded Age [Economist]

EXT. BAY BAR
The Sunday noon crowd at Bay Bar consists of those running in and out to get iced coffee products and those sitting at tables enjoying iced coffee products. VISORGAY, wearing olive drab cargo shorts and a navy mesh Nike visor, sits with TANKGAY, in olive drab cargo shorts and a robin's egg blue tank. They are at a prime table overlooking the harbor and the boardwalk that runs along it. Across the water, unidentifiable shrieks can be heard.

Previously: The Pines Party

Seeking full charge Editor for new high-end, affluent gay weekly focused on mainstream politics, business, science, art, and sports, and gay sports and local culture.

The magazine is the gay version of The Economist mixed with New York Magazine, and will be started on a very small scale, but grown quickly into multiple national editions.

Candidates need to have degree from top college or university and an educational or work background in Politics and/or Business.

If no prior experience, candidate must prove capabilities in pre-interview.

So much to work with here. "Sports and gay sports!" (Go for it.) "The gay version of The Economist." Why not? Everyone copies it, how hard could it be to translate into gay? Add a snide, empty dash of New York magazine and there you are! If only we had a degree from a top college or university we'd be out of here so fast this whole blog would be dead air. Do let us know what capabilities you need to prove in that pre-interview, please. (And is it anal?)

Editor of new gay weekly - politics, business, science, sports [Craigslist]