I'm happy to see lots of Magazine/News themes being released. They are my favorite type of theme and the main reason I was attracted to WordPress to begin with. As Jeff mentioned they never went away, it's just interesting to see so many being released at the same time.

I can't wait to see the impact "Citizen Journalism" has on old school media. The larger media companies are currently discussing ways in which they can start charging for the majority of their content. If that happens, many people will seek other sources for news. In my community we are seeing several small news startups begin to compete with one very established local newspaper. In many cases they publish stories that are more in-depth and engaging than the established paper which has been forced to continually cut it's staff.