Newsweek goes out with a bang: the inside story on the Lewinsky scoop

 Newsweek’s final print edition has hit the newsstands and in it editor-in-chief Tina Brown writes a detailed description of why the magazine was so relevant for nearly 80 years and why it’s switching to digital-only.

At The Daily Beast, Newsweek’s online partner, a short video displays dozens of past Newsweek covers.

But perhaps the most compelling content consists of Michael Isikoff recounting how he got the scoop about President Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky but then got scooped himself a few days later by online writer and aggregator Matt Drudge.

Here’s Isikoff’s opening:

“It isn’t often in this business that you’re sitting at your desk and you get a phone call from a source that causes you to nearly fall off your chair. But that’s exactly what happened in my office at Newsweek’s Washington bureau early on the afternoon of Jan. 13, 1998. ‘There’s a little event going on at the Ritz-­Carlton in Pentagon City right now you might want to know about,’ my (very plugged-in) tipster told me. Linda Tripp was having lunch with her good friend Monica Lewinsky—and Ken Starr had the whole thing wired. Starr?! Yes, my source said: I know it sounds crazy, but Starr (the independent counsel appointed to look into Bill Clinton’s Whitewater business dealings) was now investigating the president’s relationship with Lewinsky. The lunch was a sting aimed at getting the then-23-year-old former White House intern to flip and cooperate.”

Isikoff recalls why his editors were skittish about the story and wanted him and a reporting partner to establish more solid confirmation on such a ground-shaking story. When one editor said the Isikoff story could allege impeachable offenses, he thought to himself: What does this have to do with impeachment? It’s just one hell of a ­story.

About 24 hours after the Newsweek team decided to wait for the following week’s edition before publishing anything about the Lewinsky affair, Drudge put this screaming headline on his web page: World Exclusive: NEWSWEEK KILLS STORY ON WHITE HOUSE INTERN ... SEX RELATIONSHIP WITH PRESIDENT.

Newsweek quickly compiled an in-depth, award-winning report, with the benefit of conversations with Lewinsky secretly taped by her “friend,” Linda Tripp. Isikoff’s conclusion: “I would have preferred we had it first, of course. But we settled for having it better than anybody else.”