Iconic US current affairs magazine Newsweek, is to become an online only publication to save on printing costs.
The all-digital version of the magazine will be called Newsweek Global and operated on a paid subscription model.
The 80-year-old publication has reported loses of $40m a year, even after the sale in 2010 to Sidney Harman, a 92-year-old audio magnate.
He bought the property for a dollar and eventually, with Ms. Brown, merged it with the The Daily Beast, the web site owned by InterActive Corps.
In a post on The Daily Beast, Tina Brown, the founder of the Web site and the driving force behind its merger with Newsweek, announce that Newsweek, the weekly magazine, founded in 1933, would cease publication at the end of the year.
“We are announcing this morning an important development at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Newsweek will transition to an all-digital format in early 2013. As part of this transition, the last print edition in the United States will be our Dec. 31 issue,” Brown said, in a message that was co-written by Baba Shetty, the recently hired chief executive.
The all-digital version of the magazine will be called Newsweek Global and operated on a paid subscription model.
The name Newsweek, in spite of its trouble in print, still has value in terms of international licensing, as well as several conferences Ms. Brown has created.
Losses at the weekly continued to The future grew grimmer still after Mr. Harman died in the spring of 2011. His heirs had said that they would continue to support the ailing weekly, but last summer the family announced they would no longer invest in the magazine.
Losses at the magazine have been reported to be about $40 million a year and Barry Diller, the chairman of IAC, which owns both The Daily Beast and Newsweek, made it clear that he would not underwrite the losses forever.
“Our offices have been filled with consultants running around with lists of people, so we knew something was about to happen,” said one staff member, who insisted on anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak and was worreid about potential layoffs.
“Regrettably we anticipate staff reductions and the streamlining of our editorial and business operations both here in the U.S. and internationally,” Brown wrote.
The announcement was timed, staff members said, to get ahead of next week’s earnings call for IAC, when Mr. Diller was expected to be peppered with questions about Newsweek’s losses.
Read the announcement here
