'Newsweek' to end print edition in December

• Economics play a big role in the decision to go all-digital
• Print magazine circulation has been sliding in recent years
• Originally spelled 'News-Week', magazine dates to 1933

Drew Kronick is pretty much done with printed newspapers.

The Westfield, N.J., resident has canceled his subscription to The New York Times and reads it on his iPhone or computer. He's reduced delivery of his local paper, The Star Ledger, to weekends. He checks out NJ.com for local information. "The only time that I really read a newspaper now is when I am traveling" and get free copies at a hotel, says Kronick, 49.

He's one of many people who still want to read the news — but not in print. The number of Americans who read printed newspapers or magazines continues to slide, the Pew Research Center says. Just 23% had read a print newspaper the day before they were surveyed by Pew on May 9-June 3, down from 47% in 2000. Those who read a magazine in print the day before fell to 18% from 26% in 2000. Those stark numbers led the publishers of 80-year-old Newsweek to make a dramatic announcement Thursday: Beginning early next year, the magazine will be digital only.

Newsweek follows other publications such as SmartMoney, which announced in June that it would go all-digital last month. And The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans went to a three-day-only print format and shifted its focus to its online operations. In Detroit, The Free Press, owned by USA TODAY parent Gannett, is now available to print subscribers just three days a week, although individual print copies are still sold seven days a week.

Those changes, and the Newsweek announcement, have juiced up speculation that the printed word, at least in terms of the news, is on its deathbed.

On Thursday, social-media sites brimmed with posts about the demise of print. "Newsweek ending its print edition. Soon, the table in my dentist's waiting room will just have a sign that says 'Look at your phones,' " said one Twitter user.

Yet even with the hype and the handful of examples of publications going digital-only, the presses won't completely stop, says Samir Husni, a journalism professor and director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi.

"As long as we have human beings, we are going to have relevant print for relevant audiences," he says.

The smart publishers will survive, he says. "To me, the death of a magazine is part of the life cycle," Husni says. "How many TV programs have you seen that have come and gone, and nobody says TV is dead."

The problem with Newsweek is that it combined its fortunes, and its style, with that of online publication The Daily Beast, he says. Provocative Newsweek cover headlines and pictures, such as a story about sex addiction and a doctored photo of President Obama with a rainbow halo, have also drawn negative attention to the publication.

"Any time you mess up the DNA of an entity, you are writing your own death sentence," Husni says. "Newsweek is not dying. Newsweek is committing suicide."

For its part, the publishers of Newsweek say the brand isn't going away. "We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it," said a joint statement from Newsweek/Daily Beast editor Tina Brown and CEO Baba Shetty. "This decision is not about the quality of the brand or the journalism — that is as powerful as ever," they said. "It is about the challenging economics of print publishing and distribution."

While print publications won't go the way of LP records or VCRs any time soon, it is a sluggish industry. Print ad revenue at magazines will increase marginally to $15.19 billion in 2012 from $15.15 billion in 2011, says eMarketer. For the same period, digital ad revenue should grow to $3.14 billion from $2.72 billion.

At newspapers, the forecast is bleaker. Continuing a sharp slide, U.S. newspaper print ad revenue is expected to fall significantly to $16.4 billion in 2016 from $19.14 billion in 2012. Digital revenue is expected to rise to $4 billion from $3.4 billion, but that will not cover the decline from print.

Other publishers are tinkering with ways to keep their printed brands viable while embracing the digital era. Early this week, more than 200 of the nation's top magazine executives and editors went to the headquarters of Twitter and Facebook to learn some tips and tools for operating in the digital world.

Those executives were part of a larger group gathered in San Francisco for an annual magazine industry conference. They discussed how to use mobile media, social-media sites, app development and online videos to keep their brands alive in an increasingly digital-focused landscape.

Magazines and newspapers worldwide are experimenting with a wide range of techniques — creating apps, courting social-media users, shooting video and moving to digital-focused publications — as they fight for their share of advertising dollars.

Clark Fredricksen, vice president of researcher eMarketer, agrees with Husni that printed publications won't die, but he says they need to find a way to capture more of the money being spent in the digital arena.

"While print circulation and ad revenues continue to decline, there is still a place in the world — albeit a diminished one — for print," he says.

Yet he says that for the first time ever, marketers this year will spend more on digital advertising than print in the USA. In 2012, his company forecasts, digital ad spending will grow to $37.31 billion in the USA while print is expected to fall to $34.33 billion — down from $35.8 billion in 2011.

The New York Times, despite print defectors like Kronick, isn't quite giving up on print. "As we grow more globally, digital is the best vehicle for that kind of growth, because it gives immediacy, it gives the ability to use tools such as video," Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a recent interview with Brazilian publication Folha de S.Paulo. "As long as our readers want print, we will provide the news and information in print. But our ability to grow clearly depends on more international and more digital."

It makes sense for print publications to embrace digital delivery of their products. That eliminates costs such as printing, paper and postage.

But readers aren't ready to give up the tactile experience of holding a printed page, says Mary Berner, CEO of the Association of Magazine Media.

"Newsweek is going all-digital, so it's easy to say that print is going away," she says, but "you can't extrapolate anything from their business choice onto a whole industry."

Berner is optimistic when she talks about print's future, but some at the conference were open about the challenges their industry faces.

"Sometimes I feel like a skydiver. The visibility is very, very low," says New Yorker deputy editor Pam McCarthy, speaking on a panel about digital publishing. "You have to plan for the future when you don't really know what the landscape will be."

Some of the industry's strategies:

-- Ditch print. It's simple economics, say the publishers of Newsweek. Newsweek circulation has been sliding for years, suffering a 31.6% drop in 2010 and 3.4% in 2011 to 1.5 million copies, according to Pew Research.

-- Embrace smartphone and tablet apps. Newspapers and magazines are creating a wide range of apps, from Super Bowl coverage to stock market updates. Fredricksen points out that the Financial Times app let the newspaper expand coverage to areas where it isn't distributed. Publisher Meredith has dozens of mobile apps, such as Must-Have Recipes from Better Homes and Gardens.

-- Use video. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which produces Martha Stewart Living, Martha Stewart Weddings, Everyday Food and Whole Living, just announced plans to syndicate its archived content through AOL and Hulu. American Media, which publishes Shape and other lifestyle magazines, says it's creating videos that, for instance, show workout routines instead of using photos. "It's just more relevant to see the full motion of a workout," says Chief Digital Officer Joe Bilman.

-- Bulk up mobile sites. Bilman says that his company is investing millions to improve all of its publications' websites. It's hiring 60 new digital media experts to help with that process. Time's Sports Illustrated recently relaunched its mobile website.

-- Circulate on social media. It's engaging for the reader and it advertises the brand. Meredith brands have more than 2.5 million Facebook fans and 800,000 Twitter followers. Hearst Magazines also embraces those social-media sites, as well as Pinterest, for magazines such as House Beautiful.

Contributing: Adam Shell and Kevin McCoy