Through the earlier chapters of my life, I always took a daily newspaper and at least one news weekly. At times, it was Time, at other times, it was Newsweek. Occasionally, I supplemented with U.S. News & World Report. (I always loved the Washington Whispers column).
Now, after today’s announcement, only Time remains. But, I have not held in my hands a copy of any of these for years…years! The story broke on The Daily Beast website: A Turn of the Page for Newsweek Oct 18, 2012 6:45 AM EDT After 80 years in print, the newsmagazine adopts an all-digital format. I was especially taken by this revealing line from the announcement:
Newsweek will expand its rapidly growing tablet and online presence.
I am doing more and more reading on my “tablet,” my iPad. As Farhad Manjoo described the iPad when it arrived, it is the perfect device for “input.” I do very little “output” on my iPad.
(By the way, I still take the daily newspaper, The Dallas Morning News, but read it seldom).
No, I have not quit reading the news. It turns out, I am actually reading quite a bit of Newsweek these days, as it is melded into The Daily Beast site, one of the many sites I check on a very regular basis. But here is a difference – I have no loyalty to any site. My bookmarks are moved around and changed pretty regularly. For a while, early in my web reading career, I read Salon every day. I haven’t checked it in ages. My daily regimen currently includes Slate.com (my favorite site, I think, for the moment), and The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post (this one is now a little less prominent in my daily reading schedule, for some reason), and The New York Times, and a bunch of blogs. A bunch! And a couple of news aggregators.
I write this to simply say – the world continues to change right in front of our keyboard moving fingers. But even with these changes, the need for quality journalism and quality writing has never been greater.
So, goodbye Newsweek. I look back on the days I read you with fond memories – seemingly, a lifetime ago.
—————
A couple of observations. My reading habits have hurt me in the arena of “local news.” I do not like this, but have not yet changed my habits enough to remedy it. I need to.
And, as I have written elsewhere, I am a full convert. When I can read a book on my iPad, I prefer that over the physical book. But, it is at a cost. I just completed a very careful underlining-pen-in-hand reading of the out-of-print book The Accommodation. (see this blog post: Racism Just Never Quite Goes Away – The Accommodation by Jim Schutze). I have so many margin notes; I “remember” what the pages with my notes on them look like. It’s the way I always read a book… You can’t do that on the Kindle app, sadly.
First Friday Book Synopsis 
I think the demise started when Newsweek ceased being a news magazine, and converted to a feature-based, editorial, and opinion-based magazine. People read news magazines because they could get summaries of the previous week’s news, along with follow-ups and developments that were unavailable through television and newspapers. Editorials, opinions, and feature profiles on famous people are dime-a-dozen, and when the magazine went in that direction, it no longer served the purpose that many had expected it to. My own subscription ends in December, and coincides with the last publication date. However, I have not cracked the cover of the magazine for months. Its relevance and importance to me ended long ago.
Karl, though there may be some truth to what you say, maybe it is the other way around. Maybe they made those changes to try to “save” the magazine. Many newspapers seem to be having to make the same attempt. It might not be a good, or the right, strategy, but surviving in print in a digital era is tough… If being a good news magazine were enough to stay in business successfully?… well, consider the demise of the print edition of U.S. News & World Report…
From Wikipedia, re. U.S. News & World Report: Since June 2008, the magazine has gradually reduced its publication frequency three times, switching first from weekly to biweekly, then going monthly in November 2008. In November 2010, it was reported that U.S News & World Report would be switched to an online-only format, effective after it published its December issue; it will still publish special issues in print on colleges, hospitals, and personal finance.