Newsweek Isn’t Dead, Is Facing a Zombie Attack

Times are tough at Newsweek, but the magazine’s Web site is keeping things lively.

There is the site’s (deservedly) much discussed Tumblr, of course. And yesterday, up popped this bit of weirdness: For some reason, entering the “Konami Code” on your keyboard–up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter–turns the site’s homepage into, um, something else (click images to enlarge).

And it goes on in that vein for a while:

No idea who or what is behind this. But I do like it quite a bit.

The aforementioned Newsweek Tumblr tells us that “we just want you all to know that this isn’t some sort of commentary on our current ownerless limbo.” So that means…what?

Newsweek isn’t the first big media site to feature an inscrutable Konami Code hack/tweak/Easter Egg. ESPN’s flagship site had a particularly colorful one last year.

For those of a certain age and/or those of you with a life, see Wikipedia’s Konami Code page. Alas, in true Wikipedia fashion, it explains the what, but not the why. Can anyone else try?