WASHINGTON (AFP) ― Newsweek announced Thursday it would end an 80-year run as a print magazine, taking the venerable publication all-digital in another sign of the woes of an industry struggling in the Internet age.
Tina Brown, editor-in-chief and founder of the online Newsweek Daily Beast Company, said the change means the magazine will “embrace the all-digital future ... We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it.”
Like other U.S. magazines and newspapers, Newsweek has been grappling with a steep drop in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.
Circulation has fallen from more than four million a decade ago to around 1.5 million last year, and losses were mounting.
The last print edition in the United States will be the Dec. 31 issue.
Brown’s note did not mention Newsweek’s international editions, except to say the new digital version would be a single, worldwide product.
Newsweek, which had a fierce decades-long rivalry with fellow American coffee-table staple Time magazine, has in recent times been losing money steadily and struggling with the transition to online journalism.
“I think Newsweek lost its relevance and that is somewhat obscured by the digital transition,” said Ken Doctor, an analyst with research firm Outsell.
“They didn’t stand out as being a must-read, and you have to be a must-read in some way.”
Doctor said that, even though Newsweek is a strong brand, it has to be able “to stand out in the clutter” to survive in the digital world.
Media analyst Rebecca Lieb of the Altimeter Group said Newsweek “has got to reinvent itself and it’s got to do so under very challenging circumstances.”
Lieb said Newsweek’s demise “is symptomatic of the format” of a weekly news magazine and warned: “Time Magazine could well be next.”
The Washington Post sold Newsweek to California billionaire Sidney Harman for one dollar in 2010, ahead of a deal with IAC to merge the magazine with the online operation to become known familiarly as “Newsbeast.”
At the time of the sale in 2010, Newsweek had piled up more than $70 million in losses over the prior two years and had forecast more red ink. After Harman’s death in 2011, his family ended its
