Newsweek ends its 80-year print run with a hashtagged cover

On December 31st, Newsweek magazine will end its print run, shifting its content to an online-only format called Newsweek Global. It’s now posted the cover of the final issue on Twitter, showing a stark black and white photograph of the old Newsweek Building in New York — which the magazine itself vacated in 1994. While it’s eye-catching and pretty timeless, Newsweek couldn’t seem to resist topping the whole thing off with a hashtag, apparently either hoping people will take to Twitter to post about the #LastPrintIssue or just unable to resist a bid for relevancy.

On sister site The Daily Beast, senior writer Andrew Romano has published an oral history of the iconic magazine, which he lauds as “a bygone form of group journalism that’s less concerned with big-name bylines than with big, cooperative storytelling.” In its last years as a print magazine, however, Newsweek struggled financially, merging with The Daily Beast in 2010. Its managers have stressed that the shift to web distribution is only an evolution of the magazine, not its end, but as now-defunct online newspaper The Daily shows, cutting out print is no panacea.