Newsweek, an American weekly news magazine published in New York City and distributed throughout the United States and internationally, announced it will stop issuing its print edition after 8 years on the market. The company said that it plans to focus only on an online version of the brand.
Newsweek’s choice is not surprising, however. Over the last few years, the magazine had to face many challanges and 2010 it was sold only for $1. Print media is rapidly on the decline, but to industry insiders this is a long-known fact since a decade. This is the reason for DubaiChronicle.com to debut as an online only magazine back in 2006, and become the first online-only daily in Dubai and the Middle East.
Back to the Newsweek, company’s officials said that the new digital publication will be named Newsweek Daily. They added that the magazine will rely on fees for subscription, but not on revenues from advertisement. Online advertisement still produces nearly 10 times lower revenues than advertisement in print. Also, some of the content will be uploaded on another news website of Newsweek Daily Beast Co, The Daily Beast.
The digital version of Newsweek will target mobile people from all over the world who prefer to be informed through top-quality material and content. This is a highly successful approach and led DubaiChronicle.com to become the publication with highest number of mobile users in the Middle East back in 2010.
The recent change in Newsweek’s approach to business was triggered by the death if the owner, Sidney Harman, back in April. The billionaire, who was the last to invest in the struggling magazine, left his business to its family. However, his relatives chose to pull the plug on the publication by cutting all its funding. After that happened, IAC/Interactive Corp, one of the founding companies of Daily Beast, became the majority owner.
Not long ago, Barry Diller, the Senior Executive of IAC, mentioned that the magazine may go online in the near future. He stated that the Newsweek brand is a successful one. But he added that maintaining such a weekly news publication is not that easy.
However, the news for digitalization didn’t make the majority of people happy. As a result, the company quickly took back its words saying that it has no plans to stop the print edition of the magazine.
Nevertheless, all that changed this week when it was announced that Newsweek will go online. The company justified their decision saying that with today’s economy print publishing is much more difficult than it was in the past.
