As if we needed any more evidence that mainstream media is worthy of little more than entertainment, Felicity Barringer’s 14 January article in the New York Times, “A Cover for Steve Jobs, a Faux Pas for Time,” proves the point in so many ways.
Steve Jobs cut a deal with Time for expanded coverage of Apple’s new iMac. It’s unknown whether or not the deal included the guarntee of the cover story. That there was a deal giving Time exclusive coverage is not in question. timecanada.com published the cover story the night before the new iMac was unveiled. Steve Jobs probably blew a gasket.
But that’s not the story.
Steven Frank, Time’s Toronto bureau chief, characterized the whole situation as a kerfuffle. That’s a disorderly outburst or tumult for those of you keeping score.
Kerfuffle indeed. We would have no way of knowing for sure that there was a deal in place between Apple and Time or Jobs and Time except that timecanada.com pulled the article from the site a few hours after its initial posting. Even though the deal probably didn’t guarantee the iMac cover, Time was clearly bending over to service an advertiser, both coming and going (or in and out, as it were).
But even the fact of a leading mainstream media outlet pimping its cover to an advertiser isn’t the real story. Surely this isn’t the first time that’s happened, and reports indicate that Fortune was also bidding for the Apple exclusive.
No, the real story is that a leading mainstream news magazine dedicated its cover to an unremarkable new product from a computer manufacturer with less than 5% market share, because “there wasn’t any other compelling news.”
That’s what James Kelly, Time’s managing editor, told Barringer (with a presumably straight face): “All along, I thought we would run it inside, because of news. I’ve been expecting any day now that bin Laden is going to be captured or dead. [But as the deadline approached] there wasn’t any other compelling news story.”
No other compelling news story? Are we to believe that the managing editor of a major news magazine was incapable of finding a more compelling news story during the first week of January?
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