Since October 2009, I've been subscribed to TIME Magazine. When it comes to statistics and figures, I'm pretty much a maniac. So, I compiled some statistics for the topics covered by TIME in the last year.
"The World"[]
For those familiar with the magazine, there's a two-page section called "The World - 10 Essential Stories" somewhere around page 10 in each edition. In it, TIME puts ten news stories on the world map. It's often news about a decision made in Washington or Brussels, about progress in one of the wars in the Middle East, newly released statistics, etc. The ten news flashes are not representative for what happens in the world. They might, however, be interesting to get to know which regions TIME really focuses on.
After almost one year (49 issues, that is), these are my statistics:
- 36.3% of all 490 news flashes point to North and Central America. 29.4% are actually set in the United States. (US figures do not include the Gulf of Mexico, which was the location of the recent oil disaster; the Gulf is considered part of Central America)
- 35.3% of the coverage is about Asia, including the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. 18.6% is about Central, South and East Asia (from Pakistan to Mongolia, Japan and Indonesia). 14.3% is about the Middle East.
- Only 17.3% of the news flashes is actually set in Europe (not including Russia). The majority of these news flashes are set in nations belonging to the European Union.
- TIME hardly cares about South America, Oceania and Africa. South America gets 2.7% of the attention, Oceania only 1%, Africa 7.3%. The most "popular" location in Africa seems to be Egypt.
- Coverage of North America shrunk in the latter part of my data period (that is, since April). Reason unknown.
It's rather clear that to the editors and/or readers of TIME Magazine, some areas are more relevant than others. I had expected a good coverage of American topics, but didn't expect the stronghold the Middle East and Asia seem to be. Europe doesn't do too bad, but it seems to me as if the news flashes that make it to "The World" are often trivial in comparison to what Europe finds important.
Cover stories[]
I also took a long at the cover stories of those 49 issues. Most cover stories are not set in a well-defined geographic region, or cover a global issue. Of the cover stories that are set somewhere, most are about the United States, then Europe (always set in the European Union), and then the Middle East. Africa, South America and Oceania never made it to the cover.