Do you remember the world before Facebook? Before music lived on a computer, or was transmitted through your white earbuds from your iPod? In the last ten years, there's been death and destruction, human and natural, worldwide. There were cultural advancements and economic depressions. Go back even further. Remember Y2K? Elian Gonzalez? Hanging chads? And then, of course, there was 9/11. And everything else.
We know all of this, of course, because we lived it.
But in case we forgot, Newsweek teamed up with Facebook and presents "The Decade in Seven Minutes" - the images are packed in there densely, the narrator speaks speedily, and of course, the news items are mentioned with no analysis. The entire decade passes again before our eyes.
Newsweek recently redesigned the content and format of its print magazine to focus less on news and more on analysis, an act of submission to the changing world of journalism. This liaison with Facebook also seems to evoke a white flag raised to the reality of how today's citizens get and process their news. It seems that Newsweek hopes that the interest online will translate to an interest in the publication, however it evolves in the years to come. Meanwhile, I'm letting my subscription to print-edition Newsweek expire, but joined the Fan Page; while this is more convenient for me, how does it pay a publication's staff?
It's a smart strategy to involve social media. But it also emanates the sadness of the industry's great unknowns.
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