We hope you damn hipsters with your Kindlepads and iNookies are happy. Newsweek, a bastion of middle-brow media culture since its 1933 inception, will convert to an all-digital format in 2013, according to an announcement today on Tina Brown’s Internet Tendency.
We mostly remember Newsweek from our college days as “the one that’s a dollar cheaper for the student subscription” and as the originator of the “Conventional Wisdom Watch,” which taught a post-Reagan America how to snark, although more recently it was also known as “the one that didn’t darken its O.J. mugshot cover” and “the one with that stupid ‘Muslim Rage’ cover.” The publication had long been a loss-leader for the Washington Post / Kaplan Test-Prep Company, which sold it in 2010 to Tina Brown’s Home for Disgraced Journalists. Brown’s announcement today insists that
We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it. 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.
In other (and somewhat shocking) news, Newsweek isn’t able to make a go of it in print even with 1.5 million subscribers. Apparently photoshops of Old Princess Di don’t come cheap.
{ 186 comments }
Oh great — now where will I get my week-old news?
Gawker?
Too soon!
Without an Mac-time Machine, you are out of luck.
From Wonket, of course.
I posted this in Wonkville hours ago.
Dok Zoom is not a vending machine into which you shove a tip and get a post!! Let the man ruminate!
Dok Zoom is not a vending machine into which you shove a tip and get a post!!
You'd be surprised… ;-)
Uh, just keep that between you and him.
CNN?
Oh, don't you worry, Time is still in print…
As a collagist, I am really fucking pissed. I JUST renewed a subscription to Tina Brown and her shitty magazine just so I can have something to cut on weekends.
Now how am I going to 'write' ransom notes? The fonts in People just aren't scary enough.
Is there finally a use for the articles in Hustler?
Articles?
Usually I just raid the magazine recycling bin at our local…oh, maybe I've said too much.
Easy! Just print out the photos from the online edition and cut those!
How do I get a printer? It's just as well. Newsweek and Time both have gone to very poor paper stock in recent years. The paper they use is barely thicker than tissue paper and it wrinkles easily. I may have to get a sophisticated printing thing sooner or later. Just so I can print things from Tina Brown's Fucking Shitty Magazine She And those Other Brits Completely Destroyed.
Try a fashion magazine.
Magazine, in case you don't know, is something you find on a "newsstand" with glossy…what? What's a newsstand?
Oh brother…*koffkoff* Get of fmy lawn!
That's easy! "Newsstand" is that one little wooden app that Apple moved my measly 10-article-a-month NYT app into on my iPhone, so I would peck around wondering what the fuck happened to it.
Oh, you could make something beautiful from a chopped up Kindle.
You inject Newsweek into people's lips?
The gooey news consistency plumps them right up.
I'm a bit concerned that you cut Tina Brown on the weekends.
S'OK, long as Weenus isn't cutting her/himself on wknds.
Haha, I still have a collage down in the basement on the first Gulf War culled from Newsweek, that a friend and I worked on as a poetry/art project.
The WSJ is already contentless, when does it go paperless too, also?
Too Noon!
This is terrible news. Guess I'll have to rely entirely on TIME for what will be now be an entirely lopsided cover story on the historical Jesus.
I know. Newsweek woulda put a 5-year-old on a stool next to the Cross …
eeew. Never mind.
[Tina Brown:] "We are transitioning Newsweek…"
Yeah, just like Mitt Rmoney "transitioned" dozens of American companies.
Career Tip: If your boss ever connects the words "transition" and "committed to" together in a meeting, it's time to freshen your résumé.
It does make it easy for Tina Brown to move all the editorial staff of her Shitty Magazine back to Merrie Olde Englande. So theye canne commente aboute Colonial elections, what what!
I bet the staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune got a memo about transitioning too.
Yep, just transitioning to another plane of existence. See ya on the other side.
Do the windows open on that plane?
OH FINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Candy Crowley did this, from her iPad.
When the papa finds out, he will begin to shout.
Where will Niall Ferguson land? I hope back in socialist Ireland, but I am pretty sure they don't want the useless fuck.
Scotsman/Clan Fergusson libel!
Not the whole clan just one useless pos.
True rumor: Tina just got hired over at 'Time'.
Who could have predicted this? Oh wait… everyboody.
I'm still waiting for office supply stores to go belly up (I cannot stand desktop printers with their paper and their ink and their obsolescence). So long, Staples, you brick and mortar dinosaur.
You know what I miss about stationery stores?
Everything
What's a "stationery"?
*WHEEEEEEEEEEZE* Well, let me *koffkoff* tell you…it all goes back to when you could buy paper 5 bees to the ream….we called them bees because nickels back then had pictures of bumblebees on them…
If there's an earthquake, the safest place to be is in a stationary store.
I give Dunder Mifflin another six weeks, tops.
Aw, I miss the print media. The computer screen just doesn't have the same delicious new-magazine smell.
Yea, but trees are happier.
Trouble is, I'm not convinced that the inevitable poisons in our groundwater from all of those discarded Kindles and Nooks will be any better for the environment.
That new-magazine smell is from volatile off-gasses that give that heavenly smell to carcinogenesis. Same with new cars.
How did I get on the need to be approved list?
Insufficient tail wagging?
Gee a couple of naughty words and I am now persona non grata. Make a crack about sending Niall Ferguson back to Ireland and boom, you're in the need approval list.
So the Editrices really do use the banhammer here? I'll try to keep my potty words in check.
Not sure that shit will work.
Potty words are not usually a problem. Intense Debate has some mysterious hiccups that no one really understands.
You're a canine in a feline-centric world?
Or, more seriously, it could be part of the mysterious Intense Debate workings which no one understands.
Cackling has been heard near the Luce mausoleum.
In the good news category, that's 284 tons of newsprint that won't be bought from Georgia-Pacific and it's Kochsuckers.
But, who will think of the added workload to all the pixels of the world. Hunh? Hunh?
Yay for screwing the Koch brothers!!
Yeah, but now it's all transfered to rare earth minerals in China and FoxConn.
Or, Newsweek needs to find a way to honor obligations to advertisers while not paying anymore printing costs until they can justifiably call it quits.
Or maybe the history gods are punishing them for publishing that awful Niall Ferguson piece.
Now who is going to claim that they have proof that heaven is totally real or that the Jesus of the Bible really for sure existed?
There's always WND, where Jeebus, UFOs, sasquatch, and conservatard "values" get fair and balanced treatment.
Magazines just haven't been the same since Spy folded.
No sacred cows, man!
Even MAD cut back on it's subscription frequency….damn electrons.
I'm holding out hopes that Graydon Carter starts drinking again
It's harder to swat a fly with an Ipad, though.
And harder to clean on the bottom of the bird cage.
There's an app for that!
Verisimilitude? You're soaking in it.
Holy crap! That's the coolest thing ever!¹
¹ "Ever" defined as "since the second beer at lunch"
That's great!
This is good timing for me, as I have already trained my dogs.
But, boy, when you really do, they are really dead.
Where will my 84-year-old mother get her news now?
TMZ, baby. Remember the little old lady from Pasadena!
Readers Digest, of course.
It's a sort of post-romantic era to transition into, yes. Love affairs with dated household pasttimes never end well. Like when Tim Allen looked at his teevee wife that one time early 90s and said "Well I fell in love with ya. I'll fall apart with ya too."
Then he went over to the ToolTime® girl, took her gently by the elbow, together walked offstage from Richard Karn and Patricia Richardson never saw her husband again.
ROTFLMAO!
America has apparently not been buying enough copies of magazines featuring stories about Photoshopped Royals, Mommy Porn or Hipster Jesus. SHAME ON YOU, AMERICA.
I am buying all the mommy porn I can get! Although I really don't know why, those nipples scare me.
Collector value!…
*Jedi hand motion*
You don't need to ask why…
Yeah, I guess we know now that headline writers can't declare War On ____ everythng forever.
Photoshopped dead royals. Don't forget the dead part.
My high school-era, Newsweek-reading self cries a single tear. Hang in there dude, someday you'll touch a boob.
Bottoms of bird cages weep.
Softly plays Taps.
Except, I'm not.
You spelled Tagg wrong.
What will people stare blankly at in waiting rooms now?
The TV screen that's permanently tuned to the local FOX channel?
I swear to God, every fucking office, laundromat and diner in NYC has FOX5! on 24-7.
Why, dear God? Why????
Because it's on every single basic cable package in the universe.
No snark, just ugly, ugly truth.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
My favorite all-purpose backhanded compliment :P
RIP. Electronic edition will not cure the problem of lackluster journalism, badly written stories and generally irrelevant or dated content. IMHO.
Nope. All of those problems are side-effects of advertiser-sponsored journalism and won't to go away until readers step up and pay for content. And we know they never will.
Present company excluded.
The problem isn't that consumers won't pay for content. I would pay, as would most people that use this site, I believe. The problem is the business model for delivering the content and the pricing. iTunes was set up to deliver on a per song basis because they figured out people didn't always want to buy the whole disk, generally they only wanted a few of the songs they liked. They also got the pricing right for their consumer. Seems there is more work to be done with the business of selling written content.
Indeed. If I thought I was getting $30/yr of news from a web news organization like Newsweek, I might be willing to plunk that down. But given the plethora (verging on a googleplex) of news outlets online, I would have to be getting ALL my news from Newsweek (for instance) to justify paying for it. If that makes any sense.
Nonsense! Everyone wants to read a constant and unremitting flow of stories about Princess Diana. I mean, if you accept it as a given that by "everyone" you mean "Tina Brown."
And it still is going to suck.
We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it.
I'd settle if you'd say goodbye to Tina Brown…
This is bad news for Look magazine. What?
Next, I predict the automobile will put the horse and carriage industry out of business.
Just wait tho, the hipsters are switching from fixies to dliigences.
Now how will they put those flyaway subscription cards that fall out every time you turn a page onto a Kindle?
My dog and his "bits" will be without a pastime (between naps).
OTOH, this will make Crazy Eyes happy, so that's one reason to have a sad over this news…
"Newsweek does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of its spiritual existence after death."
I predict Ronny Reagan will be taking over as editor in the very near future.
It's not as much the iPads but the constantly shitty content. There is a reason why my dad (a former subscriber) called it Newsweak.
I used to subscribe to magazines (I see you Economist and Time) but the simple/dumb analysis, editorial drivel and self congratulating bullshit (really? Is this how you treat me, Time's 2006 person of the year?) drove me to the intertubes. Here I can get my newz with porn and marry an Asian ads and I don't mind (sort of.)
Aww man, you get the Asian ones? I just get the shitty Russian ones. I've seen Law & Order – those gals'll cut ya.
Can someone tell me what the conventional wisdom has to say about this?
They wouldn't print it if it wasn't true
I don't think my dad has ever recovered from U.S. News & World Report ceasing its print edition.
There's going to be a whole generation of olds sitting in their retirement home rocking chairs turning invisible pages out of habit.
They can subscribe to Reminisce, which just reprints old stuff under the headline "Remember When…"
Except they're in nursing homes, so they probably don't
That was a groaner. I approve.
Wait, USNews isn't in print any more?
Apparently I didn't miss it at all!
They stopped two years ago. In fact, I'm not sure if they're anything but a website that ranks colleges by now.
For the past 8 years, despite moving several times and never paying for a subscription, I've received print editions of Vogue every single month. Can't Vogue go digital so I can continue to completely ignore it without the added perk of dead trees?
Be careful, that "Penthouse Forum" every month helped track down Bin Laden.
Dear Pantshouze,
You weel never b'leef this, but one time in my cave…
… Needless to say, none of them were virgins by morning.
Why won't Vanity Fair do this for me?
It has been Jesus who has been paying for your Vogue subscription all along, even though you have turned your face from Him! Won't you please accept Him into your life now, along with this Chanel scratch-n-sniff perfume card?
My precious, precious child, where you see only one set of footprints, that was when I was carrying your Vogue. And where the footprints are all jumbled up? The Hendersons' goddamn dog attacked Me.
"But why was there only one set of footprints, Lord?" "My child, the Sandpeople ride single file to hide their numbers."
Did you tire of looking for actual articles among all the ads (with impossibly skinny waif-like "people")?
But I must say, your avatar is nicely dressed. Well done Vogue.
I came this close to canceling my subscription to the New Yorker because of Brown. One more article about Michael Eisner would've done it.
You know what Niall Ferguson will say about this?
What will God do for tabloid-level PR?
Dr.we have a flat line.Ok people I'm calling it PRINT IS DEAD.Time of death the 21sy century.Toe tag it,and bag it.
And call Romney for the baptism.
I must remember to bring my iPad to the grocery store so I can continue to ignore Newsweek there.
"I am become Tina Brown, Destroyer of Print."
Aw, come on! Give Tina a break!
It came down to "yearly face lifts v. putting out a news magazine"!
Look upon my non-magazine, oh ye mighty, and weep.
Can't Big Pharma keep the print edition alive just for distribution in Doctor's offices? I sort of felt that was what the thing was produced for anyway.
Won't someone think of the people who don't have iPads???
Tina Brown is like the Josef Mengele of magazines.
The exotic blend of Opium perfume, Sanka, and Reader's Digest always reminds me of my Grandma.
Does heaven exist for irrelevant magazines?
This trend must stop! How am I going to get my picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone if there is no cover?
You have a point
"I got my picture on the homepage of the Rolling Stone" just doesn't have the same rhythm.
"Gonna forward five pageviews to my mother"…nah, doesn't work.
Everyone knows the only news fit to print these days are about Kanye fucking Kim and if the sparkly vampire is dumb to take back K-Stew.
We also need more pics of celebrities' babbies!
Don't forget Honey Boo Boo.
Better Redneckognize!
It's so nice to see that there are still people who know the really important topics of our day! I'm just sad, what with their show ending, my girls will not be able to keep me abreast of the latest trends in Italian-American New Jersey style and manners. Bummer.
Now what will I be able to blow expiring airline points on at the end of the year.
Soooo- now Newseek believes in evolution?
Another Cosmo conspiracy?
Your move, Time.
Great. Now where will I get my little postcards to renew my Newsweek subscription?
I get all my current events info from teh Wonkette, where all the newz that fits, they
printpost.This trend is bad news for the cologne sample industry.
Mrs. weejee rejoices. She hates those stinky inserts.
So are dentist's waiting rooms going to set out iPads? Oh wait, there are always 5-year old copies of the dentist's "Yachting" magazine.
But, I've always enjoyed thumbing through The Plaque Observer while waiting.
Was him and Julio gay sexing down in the schoolyard, or just smoking the ganja? I never could figure that shit out, after all these years. Kodachrome, too, what was up with that? Dick-pics?
But will Tina Brown and Steve Inskeep still talk on NPR and tell me what I need to read now and then? I'm afraid my rage levels will dip below sustainable levels if I don't get that periodic, massive infusion of smug, self-important pseudo-intellectual pomposity.
Isn't Tina one of the hollow, stuffed men who regularly appear on Morning Joe?
May as well be.
Yeah, but she's so perky.
Nice obit, Dok. I'm a teeny bit wistful, as I probably learned more from Newsweek in the '80s and '90s than from my education at Last Resort Community College and Mediocre State/Cornfields, and as I've said before, if you can't spare an hour a week for a mag like Newsweek, you have no fucking excuse for being ignorant. There was something to be said for having a few authoritative sources for information with the resources to check facts and get shit right, as opposed to every dipshit being vouched for by every other dipshit on the Internet 'cause pixels are "free".
When he's at home and he blows his nose
He don't use tissues or his sleeve
He don't use napkins or any of these
He uses magazines
Skoal Rebel approves this message.
He uses maaaaaa-gazines
Now With More Quid Marks.
THis has to be good news for John McCain!!
I thought they died years ago.
But….but….Who will make up for the trees that won't need to be needlessly wasted? Please tell me that they are still printing important stuff like People, Style, U.S. News and World Report, and Mad Magazine!
Every kid now knows Newsweek is just a broken iPad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk&f…
Here I was hoping it was the Muslim rage that did Newsweek in.
Put it this way.
You know the phrase "Keep Fuckin' That Chicken"? That was on FOX5! news. I think they have a Hispanic anchoress, and two black weathermen. I don't really watch them much so I'm not sure but I can tell you that the morning crew makes my skin crawl (Mike Kelly is police chief Ray Kelly's son, and an alleged sexual predator)
I guess that "Heaven in Real" cover story didn't quite do the trick.
Per Vanity Fair:
"Pairing stock images and incendiary statements at random and slapping them on the cover did not, in the end, turn out to be a business-saving publishing model."
Regarding that picture – Comics Curmudgeon libel!
Cool. Now I can not read it on my iPad instead of not reading it in print. That's much more convenient.
The internets succeeded where Henry Luce failed. Good old internets!
Hey-y-y-y-y…will all those "People of the Book" soon be regarded as medieval dimwits?
Can we have bonfires?
"FILTHY IPADS FINALLY MURDER NEWSWEEK PRINT EDITION"- Well, somebody had to put it out of its misery.
Oh yah! I forgot about that…I read Newsweek on mine
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