It’s no secret that traditional journalism is having a hard time of it as more and more people shift to digital media. The latest big change is that popular magazine Newsweek announced that it will cease printing paper copies and switch to a digital-only format at the end of this year.
December 31 will be the final print edition of the magazine’s 80-year run, after which the publication will be known as Newsweek Global.
The digital-only version for tablets and browsers will require a subscription, but some of its stories will appear on sister site The Daily Beast. Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown and CEO Baba Shetty informed readers of the change on The Daily Beast, saying, “We can most efficiently and effectively reach our readers in an all-digital format.” However, that will probably mean a slimming down of the publication’s editorial and business teams.
While this is an interesting turn of events for Newsweek, it will also be interesting to see whether the company does see financial improvement with the transition online. Newspapers and magazines have been struggling for years with how to get subscribers to pay for quality online content; The New York Times is one of the more public examples of the outcry over adopting a paywall. If more publications switch to digital-only, readers may have to reconsider how much reliable news they can obtain for free.
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