Last week Newsweek announced that they would no longer be publishing a print version of their magazine. They are trying to spin this as just entering a new era of an online only version of Newsweek. I personally see it as the end of an era and the end of the line for Newsweek. Now, I fully understand that I’m a big part of why print media is fading from existence. I seldom pick up a magazine and I never pick up a newspaper or news magazine. By the time a print version of the news, whether it is daily or weekly, hits the newsstand I’ve already read all about it on one of many online news outlets. If its breaking news, I’ve probably also already recieved e-mail, text message and push notifications.
So, will I miss Newsweek or any other weekly news magazine? Probably not. However, I feel a lot of weird nostalgia for this particular casualty of the online news revolution. Besides the fact that the magazine has been in publication for just about 80 years, it was a staple in our house when I was growing up. My father had a subscription and it was his favorite source of national and world news analysis. Every school project that my sister and I ever had which involved clipping pictures of things and gluing them to something included items clipped from Newsweek (and perhaps the Sears catalog). In the pre-desktop publishing world nothing spruced up a report like pictures of world leaders clipped from the pages of Newsweek. As we grew older, Newsweek became the source of topics for current events assignments and history reports.
And that is why I feel a bit of nostalgia for a magazine that I haven’t bought or read for around a decade.
Read more about it from the AP at http://bit.ly/RiV9q4.