NEW YORK (AP)
-- Newsweek will end its print publication after 80 years and shift to
an all-digital format in early 2013.
Its last
U.S. print edition will be its Dec. 31 issue. The paper version of
Newsweek is the latest casualty of a changing world where readers get
more of their information from websites, tablets and smartphones. It's
also an environment in which advertisers are looking for less expensive
alternatives online.
Newsweeklies have been in
an especially tough spot at a time when people don't want to wait a
week to read commentary and news digests of big stories, given a flood
of instant content available online.
The
announcement of the change was made Thursday by Tina Brown,
editor-in-chief and founder of The Newsweek Daily Beast Co, and Baba
Shetty, its CEO. Job cuts are expected.
"In
our judgment, we have reached a tipping point at which we can most
efficiently and effectively reach our readers in all-digital format,"
Brown and Shetty said on The Daily Beast website.
Newsweek's
decision does not come as a surprise. Barry Diller, the head of the
company that owns Newsweek, announced in July that the publication was
examining its future as a weekly print magazine. Diller said then that
producing a weekly news magazine in print form wasn't easy.
Newsweek
isn't the first to drop its print product. US News & World Report
dropped its weekly print edition years ago and now focuses on the Web
and special print editions, such as a guide to best graduate schools.
SmartMoney announced in June that it was going all-digital. Dow Jones
& Co., a unit of News Corp., said at the time that 25 positions at
SmartMoney would be eliminated.
Brown said
staff cuts at Newsweek are expected, but didn't give a specific figure.
She also said that Newsweek's editorial and print operations would be
streamlined in the U.S. and abroad.
Newsweek's
print edition has been losing relevancy over the years as readers
flocked to new, digital sources for news. It did become a conversation
piece last month when a cover essay, "Muslim Rage: How I Survived It,
How We Can End It," spawned a huge response on Twitter. Newsweek had
invited Twitter users to write about the subject using the hashtag
"MuslimRage." But most people, many of them Muslim, mocked the subject
instead of adopting the article's serious tone. Newsweek, for its part,
took the jabs in stride and said its covers and hashtags spark debate on
big topics.
Newsweek hasn't been doing well
for years. Mounting losses prompted The Washington Post Co. in 2010 to
sell Newsweek for $1 to stereo equipment magnate Sidney Harman. Harman
died the following year.
Before he died, he
placed Newsweek into a joint venture with IAC/InterActiveCorp's The
Daily Beast website in an effort to trim the magazine's losses and widen
its online audience.
Brown and Shetty said
the all-digital publication will be called Newsweek Global and will be a
single, worldwide edition that requires a paid subscription. It will be
available for tablets and website reading, with certain content
available on The Daily Beast website.
"We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it," they wrote.
Copyright 2012 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.
