Newsweek To Go Digital-Only In 2013 110
Tony Isaac writes "Newsweek has announced that it will cease print publication at the end of the year, going all-digital. The new digital edition will still be based on a subscription model. Who will be next?"
The problem isn't the medium - it's the title (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with Newsweek isn't the medium - it's the title. Who waits a week for their news, even their analysis anymore?
It makes perfect sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Sad (Score:5, Interesting)
It used to be a good source of info. I remember learning about Alta Vista from Newsweek. Oddly, and if I'm remembering correctly, they were profiling Leslie Nielsen who loved the search engine.
Re:The problem isn't the medium - it's the title (Score:4, Interesting)
For print (and electronic, for that matter) weeklies, The Week [theweek.com] and The Economist [economist.com] offer more than Newsweek/Time/USNAWR ever did.
Those who are more interested in quality coverage with both breadth and depth than a lightweight, but timely response from pundits.
I still read the print newspaper.... (Score:4, Interesting)
When I fly it is usually realatively short flights, 1-3 hours. Knowing I can't use electronics through half of the flight I just pickup a newspaper or a copy of news week for the trip, I read it on the flight and leave it at the gate for others to read after me. Same with the newspaper at coffee shops, its a media that is comfortable for me, whereas small phone screens or electronic tablet screens really feel foreign still to me.
I had a Kindle Fire for a while but found that wifi coverage really wasn't very good even though I live in a major city. No wifi on the train, or it wasn't working most of the time so I couldn't read the news or it was so slow that I spent half the time loading on congested wifi. Print media is still the way to go in many circumstances, unfortunately the market is shrinking very quickly so it may go the way of betamax, but until then I'm holding on.
Re:Oh well (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe OMNI was first to go from paper to Internet Only in 1995. It only survived as an Internet magazine for three years.
Are there any magazines that fully made the switch and survived for any length of time?
WIRED backed out of making a full switch.
Anyhow, I miss OMNI. In paper.
The problem is the medium (Score:5, Interesting)
Rather than adapt to changing technology, many print magazines opted to cut costs by cheapening the content, and catering to the dumbing down of the public. You don't need to wait for hindsight to know that's a bad idea. I've seen many a restaurant go the same way. Try to cut costs so much that the quality of the food suffers, and end up going out of business even faster as customers run away. US News and World Report tried to replace much news with Top 100 lists. I suppose those are cheaper to produce than real news, but they simply aren't that useful or interesting though they did make a big deal over the Top 100 universities with difficult to credit claims that the schools cared so much about it that they were all striving to improve their rankings in the magazine. Recently, US News went under and moved all their remaining subscribers to Time. I wouldn't be surprised if Time died in the near future.
Another bad idea is screwing with subscription models. Used to be that you'd get a renewal notice. Now, many magazines and newspapers are pushing the highly annoying automatic renewal with of course automatic charges, trotting out very lame and pathetically contrived reasoning that everyone is doing it, it's for our convenience so that we won't miss a single precious issue, and we asked for it, etc. Condescending and insulting. And clingy and desperate. Not qualities that inspire confidence in their journalism. Just this year, Reader's Digest made automatic renewal the default method, though at least it is optional. I quit the local newspaper when they wouldn't offer any subscription that didn't include automatic renewal.
Science News tried a bit better approach. They changed from a weekly to a biweekly to cut postage costs. It's a start, but ultimately, magazines must move entirely online. The cost difference alone dictates this move. But there is more. Online archives are far better than a shelf full of old issues. Much easier to search, and saves hugely on space. Dead tree is dying. Whenever I have moved, one thing that I did not lug with me were magazine collections.
Re:Off-topic: today's logo (Score:4, Interesting)
A fitting tribute to Slashdot that garbage from the submitter was posted without any editorial oversight.
... and then corrected by a +5 informative annoyed nerd in the comments. Good thing you don't need my last modpoint, because I just spent it on someone who pointed out that
Only on the Commodore 64 was Å the last letter of the Swedish alphabet, due to the PETSCII values assigned in the nordic ROMs.
This kind of shit is the reason I keep coming back to Slashdot. The editing's always been hopeless but there's gold in them there comments.