TIME Doesn’t Want to Bore You With Real News

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This never gets old. When America’s venerable newsweeklies don’t think Americans can handle the truth — see Newsweek‘s work on global warming and losing Afghanistan — they put real reporting on their international covers and soft-peddle the U.S. with all sorts of nonsense.

And if you’re going with nonsense, why not the nonsense that Americans love most — pop theology. According to Folio magazine, a cover featuring Jesus or the Bible can raise single-issue sales by roughly 50%, and as a result TIME and Newsweek frequently try to out-Christian one another on consecutive weeks. (See “Jesus, What a Cover!” from the Dec/Jan 2006 issue of Mother Jones.)

So, yeah. This week it’s TIME serving up “The Case for Teaching the Bible” to Americans, and “Talibanistan” to its international audience. As Wonkette puts it, “Americans get the special-ed stories.” I don’t know if I should be disgusted with and embarrassed by the magazine editors who made this decision, or the magazine readers whose tastes they are clearly pandering to.

Oh, and check out Rose’s thoughts on Mother Jones‘ Arts and Culture blog, The Riff.

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In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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