Newsweek Print Version RIP

No doubt you heard by now, after 80 years of providing a printed magazine, Newsweek will stop publishing a print version. Its last U.S. print edition will be its December 31, 2012 issue. Beginning in 2013 it will commence publishing an online version only of the magazine. I love the internet and I access much of my information on the internet.  I pay for the Wall Street Journal’s on online version. I read the LA Times and several other newspapers on line. But I have always liked my magazines printed so I could hold them in my hands. So I could underline passages and write notes in the margins.  I take Vanity Fair, The New Republic, Harpers and a handful of other magazines that are delivered by the mailman to my house.

 I was saddened at hearing that there will be no more Newsweek magazines at airport newsstands, or for that matter, any newsstands.

The internet has changed the way we access our news and other information. I get daily downloads of CIO Today, an online service dedicated to technology. In regards to Newsweek it wrote:

 The paper version of Newsweek is the latest casualty of a changing world where readers get more of their information from Web sites, tablets and smartphones. It's also an environment in which advertisers are looking for less expensive alternatives online.  Newsweeklies have been in an especially tough spot at a time when people don't want to wait a week to read commentary and news digests of big stories, given a flood of instant content available online.

Newsweek isn't the first to drop its print product. US News & World Report dropped its weekly print edition years ago and now focuses on the Web and special print editions, such as a guide to best graduate schools. SmartMoney announced in June that it was going all-digital. Dow Jones & Co., a unit of News Corp.

Salt Lake City’s Deseret News is now only available online. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News has terminated operations altogether. IN recent hundreds of newspapers have terminated operations altogether or now only offer online versions.

Technology marches on.  That is a good thing but some of the changes and casualties of progress will be missed.