Parade, the national magazine inserted into many Sunday newspapers, has long seemed a relic from a prior age. But today it outdid itself. Subscribers opening their San Francisco Chronicle this rainy morning, for example, were greeted with this shock:
A cover story interview with Benazir Bhutto, asking whether she "is America's best hope against al-Qaeda?"
Let's hope not, as she has been dead for ten days, in an assassination that has dominated global news coverage ever since. Of course, this happened because Parade (like most magazines) is printed well ahead of its publication (and distribution) date.
What is amusing (or disturbing) about this issue's debacle, depending on your point of view, is that no one in the chain of command from Parade through the distribution network including the Chronicle editors, chose to remove this embarrassment from their Sunday offering.
Is the advertising revenue it provides that valuable? Where is their collective sense of journalistic pride? Increasingly, print publications are being rendered irrelevant. Today's disaster indicates one of the reasons why...
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2 comments:
This was in the Los Angeles Times, too (and probably in a whole lot of other papers nationwide). Parade manages to keep a web site (who knew?) that insists that this interview (conducted in November) was posted the day Bhutto was killed. Still, Time, Newsweek and the Economist can change their covers on a dime....
Thank you, Andrew! And it's great to hear from you...
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