Newsweek, once among the top magazines of the US media landscape, is about to disappear from news-stands as the publication that provided weekly news analysis for generations of Americans transitions to being published online only. Editor-in-chief Tina Brown and chief executive Baba Shetty announced in October that the last print edition would hit the stands in the United States on December 31. Newsweek has several international editions, which are going out of print as well.
The online version, Newsweek Global, will be a single, world-wide edition available to subscribers through e-readers on the web, mobile devices and tablets. "We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it," Brown and Shetty wrote in an article. "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. It is about the challenging economics of print publishing and distribution."
However, Christopher Sterling, emeritus professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, said he does not think the transition can save the weekly magazine, which has been losing its foothold and relevance in the 24/7 news cycle. "I can't see how the Newsweek brand will make it amidst all the competition that's online," Sterling said.
But Newsweek is not the only legacy news magazine disappearing. Sterling called the trend of traditional news outlets going under "systematic" as they struggle to reinvent themselves in the digital era. "Magazines are getting thinner and thinner," Sterling told dpa. "It's like watching a friend die ... I think we'll see a lot of familiar titles disappear."
Sterling said Newsweek has always been second to its biggest competitor, Time. That allowed Newsweek to be more "edgy" providing more investigative stories. Patricia Phalen, an associate professor at George Washington University, said Newsweek is an "immensely important and iconic" magazine, with a strong following, which was defined by its rivalry with Time.
"People are die-hard Newsweek fans or die-hard Time fans, but one of those magazines was traditionally present in every household," Phalen told dpa. "Newsweek was something to be saved and put on coffee tables." According to Phalen, that tangibility of the news magazine, people's ability to pull it out anywhere and any time will be lost.
Newsweek has had an illustrious history since its foundation in 1933. The first edition was published February 17, 1933, with seven photos on the cover, showing a Nazi march among others. One issue cost 10 cents and the annual subscription price was 4 dollars. The magazine was bought by the Washington Post Company in 1961, and grew to be the second largest weekly in the US.
Sterling said Newsweek had its heyday during this period. Newsweek's circulation peaked in 1991 with a circulation of 3.3 million, which gradually dropped to 1.5 million by June 2012, according to the Pew Research Center. However, even at its peak, Newsweek's revenue was only a fraction of that of Time, The New York Times noted. The magazine's decline started in 2009, when then editor-in-chief Jon Meacham decided to cut the circulation by half to avoid bankruptcy after the company lost 20 million dollars in the first quarter of that year alone, the Washington Post reported.
The magazine raised the price of subscriptions from 45 cents per issue to 90 cents to make up for lost advertisement revenues as readers abandoned the magazine for online news. "If we can't convince a million and a half people we're worth less than a dollar a week, the market will have spoken," Meacham said in 2009. However, even Meacham's drastic efforts were not enough to save the magazine and it was bought in August 2012 by audio pioneer Sidney Harman for 1 dollar in exchange for taking over the publication's financial liabilities.
The transition to digital only content started in 2010, when Newsweek merged with The Daily Beast, an opinion website founded by Brown in 2008. On its website, The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company described the merger as "bringing together the warp speed 24/7 website with the depth, analysis, and investigative power of a great print magazine."
Currently, the joint operation attracts 19 million online visitors each month, which the company expects will grow as consumers continue to move to digital devices. The number of tablet users in the US alone has grown to 70 million from just 13 million two years ago, the announcement about Newsweek explained. Despite the efforts, Sterling expects the magazine to disappear completely, while Phalen said moving into the digital realm will allow the magazine to provide multimedia content and allow it to uphold the same quality of journalism it's known for. However, the print magazine's disappearance from the news stands and coffee tables will certainly leave a hole in the changing US media landscape.
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