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Goodbye to printed Newsweek

October 18, 2012

Come the end of this year, the venerable Newsweek will no longer appear as a print edition. Top executives of the magazine have announced that the weekly will move to an all-digital format to save costs.

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A Newsweek edition on the rack
Image: Getty Images

The well-known Newsweek announced on Thursday that its print editions will be no more as of January. The magazine, which has been on newsstands for almost 80 years, announced that it will go purely online in 2013.

The executives Tina Brown and Baba Shetty said in a post on The Daily Beast website that the all-digital publication will be called Newsweek Global. They added that it will involve a subscription-based system and be available on e-readers for both tablet PCs and the Internet.

"We're transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it," Brown and Shetty said in a statement.

Layoffs in the pipeline

The two executives added that the decision to stop printing the magazine is "about the challenging economics of print publishing and distribution." They warned that the change will entail job cuts, but did not specify how many.

Newsweek has long experienced financial troubles. In 2010, the Washington Post Company sold it to businessman Sidney Harman for a symbolic $1.

Despite a merger with the popular news and commentary website Daily Beast, Newsweek has continued to lose an estimated $40 million (30.5 million euros) a year.

hg/mkg (Reuters, dpa)