Things haven't been so great in the world of weekly news magazines in recent years — what with the fact that we now have an hourly news cycle and a magazine like Time or Newsweek is always going to be a week behind the internet once it hits stands. That basic fact, that people aren't getting their news in print so much anymore, hasn't stopped "turnaround veteran" Tina Brown from trying to make a go of it at the helm of Newsweek, which as you can see from the chart above has suffered mightily in the new magazine economy — with circulation dropping by half, to just 1.5 million, between 2007 and 2010.

A new mini exposé in Women's Wear Daily describes the chaotic and thankless existence of staffers inside Brown's Newsweek, where one staffer sums it up by saying, "You’re exposed relentlessly to the truth that we’re not putting out a good magazine. I mean, Regis Philbin is our cover this week."

It's been exactly a year since the struggling 77-year-old magazine merged with Brown's start-up web venture The Daily Beast, quickly propelling Brown from her first foray into the news blogosphere back into the print world. And Brown, who's known to spend money wildly in her fixer efforts (which, in headier days with bigger ad revenues, meant bigger payoffs for Vanity Fair and the New Yorker) remains positive about the venture, saying, "I know a thing or two about turnarounds and they are not for the faint of heart." But while some are arguing Brown may have lost her touch, we're going to conjecture that the merger could only mean good things for Brown and her website, and whether Newsweek becomes a casualty in all this probably doesn't matter much to her. She saw the writing on the wall when she decided to move onto the web, right?

The Real Numbers Behind Newsweek [The Awl]
Tough Times at Newsweek [WWD]