Newsweek plans to refocus on a smaller, higher-end audience -- and abandon coverage of the big story of the week.

From the NYT:

THE recession has taken a heavy toll on sales of celebrity gossip magazines, a classic impulse buy at a newsstand or a checkout line, but in general, magazine circulation has held up well despite the downturn, according to figures released Monday.

In recent years, obsession with the likes of Jen, Britney, Angelina and Brad had guaranteed rising sales. But many magazines in that business recorded double-digit declines in circulation in the second half of 2008, compared with a year earlier, defying the maxim that escapism sells in tough times. The numbers came from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which collects and analyzes data for most of the industry.

Gossip magazines are especially dependent on single-copy sales — as opposed to subscriptions — and across the industry, those sales dropped 11 percent from July through December.

NYT executive editor Bill Keller dishes.

From the BBC:

Another report on local corruption or the conduct of a war, another dead journalist in the Philippines.

Family members, friends and witnesses flee for safety; no one dares to testify about what they saw - perhaps a motorbike licence plate and a glimpse of the men who shot the journalist in the head.

Local prosecutors are too close to the warlords or army commanders and decline to pursue the case.

And so the toll rises: 63 dead journalists in the past eight years.

It sounds like a military-run state, where rights are routinely suppressed and no laws exist to guarantee democratic freedoms.

But this is the Philippines, where press freedom is often touted as a crowning achievement of the democracy brought about by the "people power" uprising which overthrew the autocratic Marcos regime 23 years ago.