The recent sale of Newsweek magazine for $1 (along with much debt) to Sidney Harman certainly does not seem to bode well for the future of the weekly news magazine. The sale of the magazine, along with the painful selecting of an editor and the behind the scene drama between Harman and Barry Diller is the focus of New York Magazine‘s article Newsboy.  Writer Steve Fishman does a great job dissecting the deal and leaves us wondering the long term prognosis for the magazine and whether it is to regain its former glory or be a vanity project of a 92 year old tycoon.

The  Carly Simon song on secrets played in my head while reading the article in Newsweek titled Privacy is Dead. Yes, we all have heard that an amazing amount of data is available online about individuals, however the extent and how it is being misused is staggering. Writer Jessica Bennett hired the firm Reputation Defender to ‘mine’ information on her. Within 30 minutes they had her Social Security number, within 2 hours they knew her home address, her body type and health status.

What is even more frightening is how the data is interpreted, and what it will mean in the near future. The use of data to create a credit score is really the most disturbing part of the article.