Newsweek ’s eightieth anniversary will be next February , but you wo n’t be able to find a commemorative issue in newsstands or in your postbox . After December 31st , the hebdomadary magazine will cease to be anything more than bits download to your iPad .
It ’s the goal of an earned run average for one of America ’s most stalwart weekly , but do n’t call back for a second that it heralds the end of mark .
In a distinction to lecturer write ( manifestly ) on The Daily Beast , Newsweek ’s digital arm , Newsweek editor in chief Tina Brown roll out the same lament that flail powder magazine have for eld :
At the same time , our job has been increasingly affected by the challenging print advertising environment , while Newsweek ’s online and e - reader substance has build up a rapidly spring up audience through the Apple , Kindle , Zinio and Nook stores as well as on The Daily Beast .
But before we start crow about how print is deadened , it ’s worth noting that Newsweek is a exceptional case . It ’s a weekly news magazine , for one , a distinct strain of periodic that ’s been position for obsolescence since the very first aggregator . Unlike monthly magazine that take the longer view out of doors of the hourly news cycle , or the New Yorker , which exist on an sinful amount of talent , Newsweek and its ilk have a modified use case . You could turn on any number of 24 - hour tidings line to get what Newsweek supply , and hey , you do n’t even have to interpret .
Even among weekly , Newsweek has stood out as a particular problem child . data point from theAudit Bureau of Circulationsshows exactly how steep a cliff the cartridge holder fall off five years ago :
Advertising environments are reverberate to be challenge when you ’re in freefall . Everyone show stable growth might pray to differ .
Newsweek pull away into the arms of iPads and Kindles is n’t about a tectonic shift for the manufacture . It ’s a chance for a perish magazine to fold gracefully , to lay off vast numbers of employee while framing it as a pivot man . It ’s an chance for The Daily Beast — Brown ’s inspiration and first erotic love — to emerge as an internet blank knight .
Will digital someday take over print ? Sure , almost definitely , finally . But this does nothing to speed that glacial pace of adoption . Digital magazines are stilljust 1.7 percentof total circulation in the US . Newsstand sales and circulation for many pubs is stable , if not on the rise . That ’ll alter dramatically in the next 10 year , but make no misunderstanding : Newsweek ’s move is n’t about embracing the promises of the future . It ’s about running away from one fading publication ’s very cutting present . [ Newsweek ]
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