It may not be Canadian, but a legacy weekly magazine shifting out of print production as Newsweek announced today will likely have industry-wide implications, at least serving as an example for publications thinking about going digital-only. As a result, we have created this roundup of coverage and analysis that those south of the border have provided.
Newsweek to cease print edition at the end of 2012
Storified by J-Source · Thu, Oct 18 2012 12:17:08
It may not be Canadian, but a legacy weekly magazine shifting out of print production will likely have industry-wide implications, at least serving as an example for publications thinking about going digital-only, and thus, we have created this roundup of coverage and analysis that those south of the border have provided.
This digital format will be known as Newsweek Global and will be subscription-based for tablets and the web, editor-in-chief Tina Brown and CEO Baba Shetty said in a statement. Select content will be available on The Daily Beast, which merged with Newsweek two years ago to create The Newsweek Daily Beast Company.
A roundup of the coverage and commentary
“Exiting print is an extremely difficult moment for all of us who love the romance of print and the unique weekly camaraderie of those hectic hours before the close on Friday night. But as we head for the 80th anniversary of Newsweek next year we must sustain the journalism that gives the magazine its purpose—and embrace the all-digital future.”
“The traditional media’s mantra now should be: adapt or die.”
“In our judgment, we have reached a tipping point at which we can most efficiently and effectively reach our readers in all-digital format. This was not the case just two years ago. It will increasingly be the case in the years ahead.”
The Daily Beast‘s Andrew Sullivan doesn’t agree.
He continues, and at about three-quarters of the way down the page, writes:
“But that doesn’t mean the end of journalism, just of the physical objects that convey journalism. The “media” is simply Latin for the way in which information is transmitted. It’s the way one idea or fact or non-fact goes from someone’s brain into another’s … Print magazines today are basically horses and carriages, a decade after the car had gone into mass production. Why the fuck do they exist at all, except as lingering objects of nostalgia?”
Howard Fineman, now editorial director of The Huffington Post Group, writes about chasing a cover story for Newsweek in 1996. “Back in the day, when you were working on a cover story for Newsweek, nothing else in the world mattered,” Fineman writes.
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