Newsweek

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Newsweek is a weekly newsmagazine published in New York City and distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence, although both are much larger than the third of America's prominent weeklies, U.S. News & World Report.

Contents

1 History

1.1 Circulation and branches

2 Highlights and controversies

2.1 Guantánamo Bay allegations
2.2 Best High Schools in America

3 Contributors
4 References

4.1 See also

History

Originally called News-Week, it was founded by Thomas J.C. Martyn on February 17, 1933. That issue featured seven photographs from the week's news on the cover. In 1937, Malcolm Muir took over as president and editor-in-chief. Muir changed the name to Newsweek, emphasized more interpretative stories, introduced signed columns, and international editions. Over time it has developed a full spectrum of news-magazine material, from breaking stories and analysis to reviews and commentary. The magazine was bought by the Washington Post Company in 1961. Newsweek is generally considered the most liberal of the three major newsweeklies, an assertion supported in a recent UCLA study on media point of view. [link]

Circulation and branches

As of 2003, worldwide circulation is more than 4 million, including 3.1 million in the U.S. It also publishes editions in Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic, as well as an English language Newsweek International. There is also a radio program, Newsweek on Air, jointly produced by Newsweek and the Associated Press.

Based in New York City, it had 17 bureaus as of 2005: 9 in the U.S. in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Washington, D.C., Detroit, Boston and San Francisco, as well as overseas in Beijing, Cape Town, Jerusalem, London, Mexico City, Moscow, Paris and Tokyo.

Highlights and controversies

Guantánamo Bay allegations

In the May 9, 2005 issue of Newsweek, an article by reporter Michael Isikoff stated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay "in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet." Detainees had earlier made similar complaints but this was the first time a government source had appeared to confirm the story. The news was reported to be a cause of widespread rioting and massive anti-American protests throughout some parts of the Islamic world (causing at least 15 deaths in Afghanistan), even though both Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard B. Myers and Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated they did not think the article was related to the rioting. The magazine later revealed that the anonymous source behind the allegation could not confirm that the book-flushing was actually under investigation, and retracted the story under heavy criticism. Similar desecration by U.S. personnel was reportedly confirmed by the U.S. a month later.

Best High Schools in America

Since 1998, Newsweek has periodically published a national list of high schools under the title "Best High Schools in America" [link]. The ranking of public secondary schools is based on the Challenge Index method of ranking, which ranks based on the ratio of Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams taken by students to the number of graduating students that year, regardless of the scores earned by students or the difficulty in graduating.

Schools with average SAT scores of above 1300 or average ACT scores of above 27 are excluded from the list, categorized instead as "Public Elite" High Schools. In 2006, there were 21 Public Elites. ([List of Newsweek's Public Elites])

Contributors

Notable Newsweek regulars include Eleanor Clift, Howard Fineman, Steven Levy, Anna Quindlen, George Will, Fareed Zakaria, and Rafal A. Ziemkiewicz (Polish edition).