Newsweek's latest cover is causing quite a stir - first for its bold headline slamming President Obama, and now for the "multiple errors and misrepresentations" that many historians and academics say cripple the accompanying story.

Newsweek's Aug. 27 issue bears the headline "Hit The Road, Barack: Why We Need A New President." The feature inside, by Harvard professor Niall Ferguson, asserts that Obama should lose the 2012 election because he has not fixed the country's financial system, created enough jobs or controlled health care costs or the national debt.

But Ferguson is under fire from a host of academics who challenge his work and say the story is a misrepresentation of the facts.

Historian Paul Krugman put his views plainly: "There are multiple errors and misrepresentations in Niall Ferguson's cover story in Newsweek - I guess they don't do fact-checking."

In a blog post for The New York Times called "Unethical Commentary," Krugman picks apart Newsweek's cover story and the assertions Ferguson makes.

In one example, Krugman writes: "Ferguson says: 'The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012-22 period.' Readers are no doubt meant to interpret this as saying that CBO found that the Act will increase the deficit. But anyone who actually read, or even skimmed, the CBO report knows that it found that the ACA would reduce, not increase, the deficit - because the insurance subsidies were fully paid for."

And Krugman isn't the only journalist calling out Newsweek for the perceived misstep.

In a column for The Atlantic called "As a Harvard Alum, I Apologize," James Fellows writes: "A tenured professor of history at my undergraduate alma mater has written a cover story for Daily Beast/Newsweek that is so careless and unconvincing that I wonder how he will presume to sit in judgment of the next set of student papers he has to grade."

Even Ferguson's Newsweek colleague Andrew Sullivan questioned the piece, saying Ferguson is an "old and good friend" who employed "glaring omissions" and "sleight of hand" in his piece.

"The piece is sadly so ridden with errors and elisions and non-sequiturs it will require a few more posts," Sullivan wrote.

In his blog post, Krugman is clear about what he expects from Newsweek regarding Ferguson's piece.

"The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through," he wrote. "Will Newsweek?"