US News And World Report

The Rapid Demise Of Print Journalism: Something To Mourn!

As one who grew up a great fan of print journalism, what is happening in the present time is a great moment of depression.

US News and World Report and Newsweek as print weekly magazines are gone.

The Boston Globe, bought by the NY Times for $1.1 billion twenty years ago, has now been sold by the Times to John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, for $70 million, a fire sale at 93 percent discount!

The Washington Post, in the Graham family for generations, has been sold to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, for $250 million, when it was worth much more than the Boston Globe twenty years ago.

Print Journalism is in rapid decline, and newspapers, as we knew it, will never be the same, and that is a loss for journalism and for the American people.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and so many other newspapers now can only survive with online commitments, by this author and millions of others.

Print Journalism played such an important role in American history, and its decline is, in many ways, a sign of the cultural decline of America, in an era where there is no cooperation, no crossing the aisle to do what is good for the American people!

Journalism has become an industry without a future, as the commitment to excellence has been replaced by the commitment to profit alone, so entertainment, rather than information, has become the major goal of online and television journalism!

This is all very sad and to be mourned over!

The Death Of Newsweek At Age 80 As A Print Periodical: A Sign Of The Times!

The announcement by the publishers of NEWSWEEK Magazine that it would stop print publication and only be available on line in 2013 and after is a sad commentary on the changes in journalism, with the rapid decline of print and the rise of electronic journalism as the answer for the future.

NEWSWEEK dies as a print publication on December 31, 2012, at the age of 80, having started publication in the worst year of the Great Depression, 1933, the first year of the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

It became a major competitor of TIME Magazine and US News and World Report, and now only TIME will survive as a print periodical, with no serious competition in the general news magazine market, on the news stands or by subscription.

Whenever any print journalism source dies, it is a loss to journalism, and sadly will add to the unemployment rolls!

While still on line, the world will never be the same once NEWSWEEK leaves us in print. It contributed a great deal to public discourse about important news events, and stirred intellectual debate. Overall, a very sad development!