The rumors floating around yesterday that Newsweek was going to significantly reduce its rate base look to be true. The Wall Street Journal is reporting the weekly magazine may cut anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million copies from its current 2.6 million guarantee as well as slim down the magazine resulting in a publication that has "more photos and opinion inside its pages."

Newsweek is seeking in part to mirror publications like the Economist, which has thrived in a tough market by focusing less on costly news gathering than on driving discussion of the day's issues. [Editor-in-chief] Jon Meacham said recently that Newsweek has never been an objective summarizer of the week's events, or "AP on nicer paper," though he acknowledged a greater emphasis lately on editorializing. "We are trying to be more provocative," he said.

So basically lots of opinions and pretty pictures. You know what that sounds like to us? A blog! We suppose eventually when this media tsunami ends sometime next year what we will left have in its aftermath is a whole lot of doctor's offices filled with newsweekly pamphlets and an in-depth reporting industry that has moved to Twitter.