The legendary print magazine, Newsweek decided to cease publishing its print edition and go all digital.
Tina Brown, editor-in-chief and founder of The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, announced Newsweek Magazine will transition into an "all-digital format in early 2013."
Newsweek and the Daily Beast, a web-based news site that launched in 2008, merged in late 2010.
The transition is not going to be an easy one for the management and definitely not a happy ending for the employers. A teary-eyed Brown revealed that the transition would include layoffs and the management is not very clear at this time as to how many people would be let go.
The remaining staff will run a digital magazine called Newsweek Global, which will be backed with an unspecified paid subscription and will be available through e-readers and the Web. Meanwhile, The Daily Beast will continue to operate as a free web site.
Newsweek is the first national news magazine to shun the print version completely and to go digital only. The decision clearly underlines the huge pressure affecting the magazine industry in general and newsweeklies in particular, the importance of which is being rapidly overtaken by the Internet. The ending of the print edition is expected to bring an end to Newsweek's estimated $40 million in annual losses.
Newsweek was founded in 1933 by Thomas J.C. Martyn, a former foreign-news editor for Time. The iconic magazine was later sold to The Washington Post Company in 1961.
The company saw a dramatic business restructuring during the 2008-2009 period shift the magazine's focus and audience while improving its finances. THe company further sank to deep financial crisis and its revenue dropped 38 percent from 2007 to 2009.
The Post sold the magazine to the 92-year-old audio pioneer Sidney Harman in 2010 for a purchase price of $1.00 and an assumption of the magazine's liabilities. In November 2010, Newsweek merged with the news and opinion website The Daily Beast, forming the Newsweek Daily Beast Company, after negotiations between the owners of both publications.
