A Comparison of U.S. News & World Report and Time Magazines
This paper will compare and contrast two news magazines from the same week. The discussion will center on whether U.S. News & World Report and Time magazine differ in any significant respects. Moreover, the paper will examine whether the new editor of U.S. News & World Report, James Fallows, can make a difference in the reporting practices of the news magazine market. This analysis will include an overview of the types of news which each magazine covers and how much space both of these competing magazines devotes to national news, world news, advertising and features or popular stories and subject matter.
At first glance, the magazines, U.S. News & World Report and Time seem to be strikingly similar. For instance, both magazines devote their first three pages to advertisements from large multinational corporations. For Time, those advertisers are Mobil Corporation and Mercedes, for U.S. News & World Report, those advertisers are Delta Air Lines and Mass Mutual. Nevertheless, the new editor of U.S. News & World Report, claims that U.S. News & World Report has more "new that you can use," which implies that readers should buy U.S. News & World Report instead of Time.
Apparently, Mr. Fallows intends to apply his editorial ideas in a way that U.S. News & World Report will become the leader in the news magazine market. One of the ways that editor Fallows intends to make a significant difference in this market is by providing readers with more useful information. Interestingly, U.S. News & World Report now has a column headed "News You Can Use." While that heading is catchy, a closer look at the types of short articles contained in that section reveals information that is sometimes helpful and other times less than greatly informative. For example, the columns subheading (which, incidentally, reads larger the initial heading "News You Can Use") is: "New & Nota...