My Baby's a Racist and I Should Kill Granny

....that's what Newsweek tells me, anyway. In consecutive weeks, the increasingly opinionated weekly magazine has gone to press with headlines reading: "Is Your Baby Racist?" and "The Case For Killing Granny." This from the same publication that informed me earlier in the summer that I'm a socialist.

The interesting thing is that the articles corresponding to these in-your-face headlines are fairly sober, straightforward stories -- not sourceless opinion pieces, as you might expect by the bold words out front. The 'racist baby' piece is a look at the roots of racism; the 'granny' piece about the need to rethink end-of-life care for the elderly.

What's clear is that Newsweek has made a calculation about headlines -- tabloid sells (not a new idea for newspapers with the initials NYP.) Or at the least it sets the tone for a new magazine strategy to be more bold, have more columnists and rely more on big names like Fareed Zakaria and editor Jon Meacham.

Newsweek has up front about its changes. "We'll aim to be provocative, but not partisan," a note introducing the new-look magazine stated, adding that there will be more opinionated pieces.

"If we succeed, these well-argued essays will make you feel vindicated—or maybe outraged. But they'll draw you in."

Draw me in those headlines did. But my household gets Newsweek in the mail each week, so we don't seem to be the intended audience. Newsweek said it was dropping its guaranteed circ from 2.6 million to 1.5 million.

What will be telling is how the new headline strategy plays out on the traditional newsstand and the new newsstand -- web news feeds that give readers even more choices from which to select. Bold headlines could equal more clicks. But is there a risk in selling a piece as opinion and delivering something different?

A TV Argument That Packs No Punch

The punch heard 'round the sports world took place after midnight Friday morning where I live. It involved an ungracious football player from Boise State University and an unhinged sore loser from the University of Oregon. The rest of the facts are as follows: The Oregon player socked the Boise State player in the chops just after the final whistle, in front of the Boise State coach and, yes, on national television.

Now, punching an opposing player in front of his own coach is not the smartest idea. That had me talking the next morning. But what most commentators seemed to dwell on was that all this happened live on national TV. The implication: How could this bozo not think about how bad this looks with all the people watching? To that argument I say phooey. Let me explain.

First, do people realize just how many football games are on TV these days? Let's just say the Tulane-Tulsa national TV matchup the next night didn't have me on the edge of my recliner. Whether a sporting event is being shown across the country isn't much of a litmus test.

If this were 1979 or even 1999, the "it looks bad because it's on national TV" argument might hold some weight. Let me explain further. If it's 1979, ESPN isn't big enough yet to show highlights of the incident three times on the half-hour, analyze it, put it online and then moralize over and over. The channel does that now, so why does it matter whether people are watching it live? They'll see the highlight plenty the morning after whenever they tune in. I go back to my opening point about how late this event actually happened. Who was really watching live?

If it's 1999, ESPN gives this play plenty of play on the airwaves. Maybe the clip isn't on an endless loop. Some people surely don't have cable or just don't watch ESPN. And there's no YouTube, most importantly. In 2009, even people who didn't watch the game or even care about the result are looking at the video, talking about it on Twitter, and repurposing it in who knows how many platforms.

So, does it really matter anymore whether something like a football punch happens on live TV? If it's during the national championship game, maybe. But otherwise, the echo effect is so great now that I argue that it doesn't.