<p>“You and I may think they are more opinion mags than news vehicles, but they have, or at least used to have, reputations for accurate reporting.”</p>
<p>If so, I would say those reputations are rather more inflated than the reps of any of the top 30 colleges ;)</p>
<p>Seriously, I have not taken the newsweeklies that seriously for the last so years or more.</p>
<p>USNWR is just drier. Whereas Time and Newsweek will report on some fake cultural “trend”, USNWR is more likely to have, well, a ranking of something or other. lots of things besides colleges
[Best</a> College Rankings, Best Graduate School Rankings, Best Hospitals, and Best Health Insurance Companies - US News Rankings](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/rankings]Best”>http://www.usnews.com/rankings)</p>
<p>I mean complaining that USNWR is “fooling people”, cause they expect news and not a made up self referential story based on rankings, is like complaining that Forbes is biased towards libertarianism, or that Harpers shockingly is both liberal and gloomy, or that Slate is supposed to be about news but has all these silly little humorous culture pieces, or that TNR publishes incredibly pretentious if sometimes insightful pieces by Wieseltier.</p>