My first career was as a computer typesetter. I can still remember my mentor telling my why it was such a great career. She told me that the world would always need typesetters because people are never going to stop reading. She was both right and wrong. We aren't ever going to stop reading, but the job of a typesetter was done away with years ago, and the way people read has been changed as well. With everything being digital, writers do their own typing instead of handing it off to someone else. I guess in a way I'm still doing the same job.
Newsweek is announcing that they will no longer be publishing a print edition of their magazine in the United States as of the end of 2012. Starting in 2013, the magazine will be all digital. They certainly aren't the first periodical to go all digital but they're the first one of this type of major significance.
Books, magazines, and newspapers are now often read in digital formats instead of print editions. They can be viewed in digital format on e-readers, tablets, mobile phones, and computers. It's just easier to read them off of the devices we're already using rather than go to the store to pick it up or get a subscription. It's this very thing that makes AppleMagazine's own digital magazines (AppleMagazine and TechLife News) even more of a success.
Newsweek was begun in 1933 by Thomas J.C. Martyn, a former foreign news editor for the competingmagazine TIme. The second-largest newsmagazine was sold back in 2010 as it searched to find a way to save itself. It had already been struggling for the years previous. It then merged with the website The Daily Beast.
This is probably the beginning of a trend. Most assuredly other periodicals are feeling the same stress, and sometimes it just takes one brave soul to start a trend. Newsweek was already having problems, and most likely other magazines and newspapers that have been suffering will start to fall as well. We're going to keep on reading, but we'll just be doing it on our cell phones and tablets.
Photo credit: money.cnn.com