Newsweek will cease to be a print magazine in 2013, with The Newsweek Daily Beast Co. L.L.C. announcing this morning that the popular weekly magazine will be converted to an all-digital product.
The redesigned publication will be called Newsweek Global, and will be available through a paid subscription model on multiple digital platforms and devices.
Select Newsweek Global content will also be available on The Daily Beast website, which, along with Newsweek, is jointly owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp. and the estate of the late Sidney Harman.
The change marks a drastic turnaround for the 80-year-old magazine, but the shift to an all-digital approach was not entirely unexpected, with paid circulation down by more than half from a decade ago and with the magazine reporting annual losses of tens of millions of dollars.
Tina Brown, current editor-in-chief of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, said the company is “transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it.”
The two publications were merged in February 2011 after Newsweek was sold to Harman by The Washington Post Co. for $1 in 2010.
“We remain committed to Newsweek and to the journalism that it represents. This decision is not about the quality of the brand or the journalism ”“ that is as powerful as ever,” Brown wrote in an open letter posted to The Daily Beast website. “It is about the challenging economics of print publishing and distribution.”
Brown warned layoffs would likely occur.
“Regrettably we anticipate staff reductions and the streamlining of our editorial and business operations both here in the U.S. and internationally,” she wrote.
No surprise about this if you’ve watched the publication shrink — and suffer with Tina Brown’s approach to the news business. (She was terrible for literary journalism at The New Yorker and no better match for the news business at Newsweek.) In this case, even if she were up to the task, the tide against Newsweek surviving as a print pub was too strong.