October 19, 2012 6:09 AM

Waitaminnit...Newsweek had a print edition??

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 Global, as the all-digital publication will be named, will be a single, worldwide edition targeted for a highly mobile, opinion-leading audience who want to learn about world events in a sophisticated context. Newsweek Global will be supported by paid subscription and will be available through e-readers for both tablet and the Web, with select content available on The Daily Beast.

A wise man once told me that time marches on, and you can either get on the bus…or get run over by it. The Internet Age has brought change into our lives at breakneck speed, and it seems the institutions we took for granted for so long are dropping like flies. A few years ago, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer stopped printing a daily paper and went to an all-digital format. The newspaper industry is facing an adapt-or-die scenario, as is the magazine industry. It’s becoming more difficult to sell newspapers, but an online presence can be something that saves a newspaper from extinction.

Those from my generation are facing a future that looks much different than the past we’ve left behind. I grew up delivering newspapers in the morning and after school, but that idea will before long be just another quaint memory. Magazines are facing the same reality, and some, like Newsweek, are bowing to the inevitable and letting go of their past. In a news environment based on speed and immediacy, hard copy just doesn’t cut it. Those of us who grew up with newspapers on our stoops every morning and magazines are finding that things, they are a-changin’.

The good news is that the Internet allows me to read the Cyrpus Mail if I’m so inclined. I can get news from places I never could have not so very long ago. No more going to the public library and reading week-old (or older) newspaper from around the country. I can get news from London that’s just as current as the news here in Portland. And I can get it whenever I want it, in most cases for nothing without having to leave my house.

There are times I find myself missing the feel of a magazine or newspaper, but when I can pull up a newspaper’s website on my iPad while sitting in a coffee shop, it’s hard to find anything to complain about.

Time marches on. Get on the bus…or get run over by it.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on October 19, 2012 6:09 AM.

GOP 2012: If you were meant to have a voice, you'd have been born Republican was the previous entry in this blog.

Romney/Ryan 2012: Who say's we're not green? We're recycling the Bush Administration. is the next entry in this blog.

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