We are announcing this morning an important development at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Newsweek will transition to an all-digital format in early 2013. As part of this transition, the last print edition in the United States will be our Dec. 31 issue.
Meanwhile, Newsweek will expand its rapidly growing tablet and online presence, as well as its successful global partnerships and events business.
Newsweek made itself irrelevant some time ago, so I don't think this will be any great loss to the national debate. I think I've said here that I once followed the magazine faithfully because it was a reliable indicator of current liberal thinking, the same way Rush Limbaugh's show is a reliable indicator of current conservative thinking. But in it's desperate bid to stop readership loss, it went to such progressive extremes that it was almost a self-parody. And lately, since Tina Brown took over, it's just been damn strange.
But I've been in this business a long time, so I have a love of print, and I hate to see any of it go away. I can get into and follow a website if it's something that started on the web, but a former print product now online only doesn't seem quite real to me, if that makes sense.
