UK: Will Newsweek's "Hit the road Barack" cover make a difference

The Independent

Hit the Road Barack: Will Niall Ferguson's damning Newsweek article on Obama have any real affect on the 2012 US presidential campaign?

Rupert Cornwell
The rumpus over Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek cover story proclaiming it was time for Obama to go proves an ancient truth. If there’s one thing worse than being talked about, it’s not being talked about.


Tina Brown, she of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and now editor-in-chief of Newsweek, is the acknowledged Queen of Buzz. And buzz she has certainly created this week – even if it won’t do much to revive the once-eminent news weekly that nobody these days takes very seriously.

But who cares about the long term? In contemporary America, politics and media have largely fused. Politics is a branch of showbiz, attention is all. And in the 2012 presidential campaign, if only for 24 hours, the magazine today held centre stage.

Read it at The Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hit-the-road-barack-will-niall-fergusons-damning-newsweek-article-on-obama-have-any-real-affect-on-the-2012-us-presidential-campaign-8063348.html