25 Dec 2012

Cover of final Newsweek magazine

1:38 pm on 25 December 2012

Newsweek has revealed the image that will grace the cover of its last print edition.

A black and white photo of the magazine's headquarters in Manhattan takes pride of place, with the line: #lastprintissue.

The death of the print edition was caused by falling advertising revenues, as audiences moved online.

From the new year, Newsweek will be a digital publication only. Editor Tina Brown described it as "a new chapter" for the magazine.

"This is not a conventional magazine, or a hidebound place,'' she wrote.

"It is in that spirit that we're making our latest, momentous change, embracing a digital medium that all our competitors will one day need to embrace with the same fervor.

"We are ahead of the curve."

Ms Brown, a former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, became editor of the publication two years ago, after it merged with The Daily Beast, a news website she co-founded in 2008.

The first edition of Newsweek was published on 17 February, 1933. Although it always took second place to TIME magazine, it gained prominence in the 1960s for its coverage of the civil rights movement.

At its height, it had a circulation of 3 million, but declining readership and advertising revenue saw it fall into losses.

It was sold by the Washington Post Company to publisher Sidney Harman for $US1 in 2010 and was merged with the Daily Beast three months later.

The BBC reports the move to a digital edition will allow Newsweek to cut costs such as printing, postage and distribution. However it will lose money from print advertisers.

As the final edition went to the printers, The Daily Beast confirmed that many of its editorial staff would be made redundant.