Tumbl-zine: On Time Magazine and differing international story play

Does Time water down its story coverage in the U.S.? That’s a question which has been floating around the interwebs since yesterday, when the internet hivemind figured out that Time ran a soft feature in this week’s U.S. edition, while the rest of the world got a much more important story about Egypt. (Fellow Tumblr Jessica Binsch did a Storify breakdown of the online reaction.) Most of us can agree Time probably blew this cover choice. However, we’d like to offer another argument here: That the magazine is merely playing to different markets, rather than blatantly dumbing down its U.S. coverage. Our latest Tumbl-zine (it’s been a while, we know) breaks down the past year in Time covers, by region and type of content. Here’s what we found.

Clarification: Any cover in this list that didn’t run in the U.S. does not necessarily mean the story attached to the cover didn’t get played in the U.S. edition of the magazine. Any commentary is specifically in regards to the covers themselves, not the stories.

Update: Time responds!