Dec

Newsweek Prints Last Issue, Moves Exclusively to the Digital Realm

Newsweek has been releasing magazines for the last eighty years and is feeling the pinch of a waning circulation. The company announced in October that it will suspend printing up tangible issues and gravitate to the digital realm. Today, the publisher posted the cover art of the last ever issue and gets cheeky using the Twitter Hashtag #lastprintissue.

The new digital model Newsweek will employ is dubbed Newsweek Global. It will be available to purchase on e-readers, tablets, and mobile phones. There are few details on the tiered subscription model, but the company is in dire need of a new financial model. Newsweek lost 22 million dollars this year, mainly due to falling advertising costs. The company lost 16% of its advertisers in 2011 and a further 20% in 2010. Its parent company is IOC, which owns CollegeHumor, Ask, and Match.com, and knows a thing or two about pure digital distribution.

Hopefully Newsweek will find a second lease on life, but I doubt it. Generalist publications are quickly losing steam to specialized news sources. Online news is broken in seconds of it actually occurring and people these days tend not to catch up a full month after it happened.

Michael Kozlowski (3019 Posts)

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about electronic readers and technology for the last four years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the Huffington Post, CNET and more. Michael frequently travels to international events such as IFA, Computex, CES, Book Expo and a myriad of others. If you have any questions about any of his articles, please send Michael Kozlowski an email to michael@goodereader.com