The Weekly Standard
The Weekly Standard | |
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Type | Weekly Political Magazine |
Format | Magazine |
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Owner | News Corporation |
Publisher | |
Editor | Fred Barnes William Kristol |
Founded | September 1995 |
Political allegiance | Neoconservative |
Headquarters | 1150 17th Street, NW Washington, DC 20036 |
Circulation | 83,000 per week |
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Website: WeeklyStandard.com |
The Weekly Standard is an American opinion magazine published 48 times per year. It made its debut on September 17, 1995 and is owned by News Corporation, which also owns Fox News. It is viewed as a leading neoconservative magazine. Its current editors are founder William Kristol and Fred Barnes. The Weekly Standard produces The Daily Standard with commentary and articles written for the magazine's website. Other frequent contributors include Stephen Schwartz, Matt Labash, and Stephen F. Hayes.
Like National Review in the administration of Ronald Reagan, it is very popular among United States President George W. Bush's administration.
The magazine posts more than one million dollars of annual losses. Nevertheless, Rupert Murdoch, the head of the News Corporation, denies that there are any plans to sell it.[1]
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Advocacy journalism
The Weekly Standard is an example of advocacy journalism, a genre of journalism based around the expression of ideological opinion. In an interview with senior Standard writer Matt Labash published by JournalismJobs.com in May 2003, Labash was asked why conservative media outlets had enjoyed recent popularity. Labash responded, somewhat jocularly:[2]
“ | Because they feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media. I say that mockingly, but it's true somewhat. We come with a strong point of view and people like point of view journalism. While all these hand-wringing Freedom Forum types talk about objectivity, the conservative media likes to rap the liberal media on the knuckles for not being objective. We've created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective. It pays to be subjective as much as possible. It's a great way to have your cake and eat it too. Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It's a great little racket. I'm glad we found it actually. | ” |
The American Conservative said of the magazine "[I]f Rupert Murdoch’s purpose was to make things happen in Washington and in the world, he could not have leveraged it better. One could spend 10 times that much on political action committees without achieving anything comparable." [3]
The American Conservative also points out how much the Weekly Standard pushed for war against Iraq and that Saddam was tied to al Qaeda. "[I]n the first issue the magazine published after 9/11, Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly, two employees of Kristol’s PNAC, clarified what ought to be the country’s war aims. Their rhetoric—which laid down a line from which the magazine would not waver over the next 18 months—was to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in virtually every paragraph, to join them at the hip in the minds of readers, and then to lay out a strategy that actually gave attacking Saddam priority over eliminating al-Qaeda. The first piece was illustrated with a caricature of Saddam, not bin Laden, and the proposed operational plan against bin Laden was astonishingly soft." [1]
Editorial staff
Editorial staff who often appear with by-lines in the magazine:
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Contributing editors
References
- ^ "Murdoch's Game", The New Yorker, 2006-10-16
- ^ Interview with Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard, , May 2003
- ^ Scott McConnell, "Murdoch’s mag stands athwart history yelling, “Attack!”," The American Conservative, 21 November 2005.
External links
- The Weekly Standard website
- "White House Listens When Weekly Speaks", The New York Times, 11 March 2003