By Jeff Bercovici

    When plans for The Week were first announced, British publishing mogul Felix Dennis called it "the only one of my periodicals I am certain will survive my own death."
     That’s an appropriately grand plug for a magazine whose motto is "All you need to know about everything that matters."
    But whether the new current-events title, which just launched, outlasts its patron, Dennis will more likely be remembered as the man whose publications perfected the art--for want of a better word--of info-humor blurb journalism.
     Contrary to popular wisdom, Dennis’s best known property, Maxim, owes its astounding success not so much to its generous deployment of celebrity skin but rather to its easily-ingested bite-size articles, charts and lists.
    Go to the home of any Maxim subscriber and see where he keeps the magazine. 
   Invariably, it’s next to the toilet. This is not just because the bathroom offers privacy. Maxim is designed to be read over a series of bathroom visits or, barring that, commercial breaks. 
   Felix Dennis’s genius lay in realizing that this is how most men prefer to consume their magazines. Forget all that business of sitting in a leather club chair, wrapped in a smoking jacket, sipping from a snifter of brandy and enjoying the latest from James Ellroy.
    The Week simply takes this lesson and applies it to the newsweekly formula.
   What you get is 40 pages of 50-200 word dispatches on politics, international affairs, science, health, celebrities, sports and culture, culled from over 100 different newspapers, magazines and web sites, which are cited. 
   The longest article in the whole debut issue, a briefing on livestock epidemics, clocks in at one page and answers the questions: What are foot-and-mouth disease and mad cow disease? How much damage have they done? What measures can be taken to stop them? What danger do they pose to the U.S.?
    In the ultimate gesture of editorial leanness, even the reviews are borrowed from other publications; a write-up of "Along Came A Spider," the new Morgan Freeman thriller, quotes film reviewers from Rolling Stone, the Boston Globe and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
    That said, how does The Week live up to the promise of its motto?
     Pretty well, as long as you don’t interpret either "all you need to know" or "everything that matters" too stringently.
    Not surprisingly, given its format, The Week’s rundowns of top stories—in this case, the China/spy plane standoff and George Bush’s first budget—lack depth. 
    Anyone who watches 10 minutes a day of CNN on the treadmill at the gym won’t learn anything new, though a discussion of the estate tax in a section titled "Controversy of the week" does a commendable job of laying out the arguments, both for and against.
    What The Week lacks in analytical rigor, however, it makes up for in scope. 
    Even a well-informed citizen of the world might be surprised to learn that Polish authorities have shut down a disco that opened a mile from Auschwitz, or that Liechtenstein is in danger of being overrun by wild boars from neighboring Switzerland.
    But it is in the range of commentary sampled that The Week demonstrates its true value. Every controversy is presented along with a summary of opinions from leading editorialists and columnists. 
   The very best department, "How they see us," provides a much-needed forum for Americans to learn how their country’s actions are perceived abroad. 
    This week’s installment reveals that European writers are surprisingly unanimous in their condemnation of Bush’s foreign policy.
     When they were talking up The Week back in January, Dennis executives suggested that the audience for the magazine would be top executives and leaders who are too busy building companies and shaping public policy to bother with magazines or cable news shows.
    In reality, it will probably be its catering to short attention spans, not busy schedules, that endears The Week to its readers as a way of staying informed, forming an opinion and cutting through information clutter—and all without leaving the bathroom.

April 18, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Jeff Bercovici  is a staff writer for Media Life

 Printer-Friendly Version |  Send to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact Us