The changes shown by those numbers become more evident if we take an impressionistic and anecdotal look at one magazine over time. We used Time magazine, the middle title between Newsweek and U.S. News in many facets of the content study, as a kind of case study. We compared an issue from October 1983 with issues from the same month in 1993 and 2003. The examination is in not scientific, but the findings here support what has been seen in news magazines on the whole. Looking at these issues, one sees an evolving animal. The magazine's mission seems to have changed. Once a broad look at the news of the week, examining events from across the country and around the world, an issue of Time in 2003 contains just one or two national stories. Pictures have gotten bigger. Entertainment news has become more important. Stories are more thematic and less descriptive. At the same time, the number of stories has shrunk. The net effect is a magazine that is more like a microscope than a pair of binoculars - a magazine that is well-suited to tightening the national focus, but less able to give a full picture of the world as a whole.
Time, October 3, 1983. Cover Story: "Holding the Line," a look at the United States in Lebanon.
The National Affairs lead, "Moving Back to Square One," is a fairly straight-forward account of the jousting between President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader, Yuri Andropov, over arms control. It runs only three pages. But the rest of the National Affairs section, six more pages, features 10 more shorter stories and small features covering such diverse things as a copper strike in Arizona to an investment scheme in Hawaii and Interior Secretary James Watt's crude remark about "a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple."
An exhaustive nine-page cover story on troops in Lebanon leads the World section. But even after that space is taken, there is still space for four pages of world coverage and five more stories on places like the Philippines and Argentina.
The entertainment section is led by a four-page look at the movie "The Right Stuff." The focus of the story is the film's potential impact on John Glenn's presidential campaign.
The other departments in the issue are two pages on the Environment, three pages on Sports, one page on Science, one page on Computers, two pages of short items on People, one page on Religion, two pages on the Press, three pages on Books and one page on the Law.
Time October 4, 1993. Cover Story: "On the Trail of Terror," a look at the man behind the first World Trade Center terrorist attack.
The first notable change by 1993 (after Time's much-discussed redesign) is the magazine's "The Week" section. A collection of news briefs, business briefs, obits and charts, it looks very similar to Newsweek's Periscope section.
The second big change is that the delineation between national and world news is gone. Instead stories are broken up by rubrics - "The Presidency," "Diplomacy," "Russia," "Disasters." Also gone are the short stories of one, two or three columns that had served to sum up news from around the country and world. There are still stories from around the country (two stories) and world (three stories), but they are fewer in number. Each story does get more space overall, but much of that length is taken up by pictures. And they are less a look at the landscape of the news than a focus on hot stories, particularly where national affairs is concerned. There are only two national pieces beyond the lead -- the Menendez trial and an Amtrak wreck.
President Bill Clinton's health care plan is covered in a six-page package with one story on how the president has found his stride politically, one sidebar story on questions about the plan and one story on Hillary Clinton. The cover story is an 11-page package, but again much of the space on those pages is taken up by pictures. The opening spread for the piece is a two-page picture with two paragraphs of text.
The other departments changed as well, leaning more heavily toward pop culture. Two pages on Business, one of them on Hollywood studios, two pages of Health, one page of Religion, one page of Science, two pages of Art, two pages of Cinema and TV, one page of Show Business, three pages of Reviews (books, movies music and television), one page of Update, revisiting the people from the Biosphere, and one page of People.
Time October 6, 2003. Cover Story: "Mission Not Accomplished" (a "special report" on Iraq)
In its current format Time has moved farther in the direction of less is more. Sections are back with defined rubrics on the tops of pages. But beyond one story in the Nation section on espionage at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, there are no stories about the nation at large. There are no pieces looking at news and events in the United States outside of Washington. And while it could be argued that this issue is different from others because it is a "special report," when one counts the pages there is not a lot of difference in length from the cover story in 1993. The cover package in this issue is 14 pages long, but the opening two-page spread is one large picture with no text. The opening two-page spread of the second piece is five out of a possible six columns. In other words, it is not just the "special report"; there simply is less national coverage here.
Time's "The Week" section essentially exists under a new name, "Notebook." This section is now home to what would likely be some of those shorter national affairs pieces the magazine used to run. Business, meanwhile, is a three-page section, but it is dominated by a large picture and graphic. Health and Science get seven pages with stories on hypochondriacs and a tour of the food laboratories where scientists fine-tune flavors and mouth feel. Society gets one page and Art gets two pages. Television gets two pages, stories about new shows. Theater gets one page, Books get three, Movies get one and People gets one page.
There is also, notably, a new news-you-can-use section called Your Time, that gets three pages. The section is full of short pieces on things like "ethnic makeovers" and the merging of DVD and TiVo technologies.