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Newsweek to end print publication

A special issue on Princess Diana after her death.Associated Press

NEW YORK — There was a time when the newsweeklies set the agenda for the nation's conversation — when Time and Newsweek would digest the events of the week and Americans would wait by their mailboxes to see what was on the covers.

Those days have passed, and come the end of the year, the print edition of Newsweek will pass, too. Cause of death: The march of time.

''The tempo of the news and the Web have completely overtaken the news magazines,'' said Stephen G. Smith, editor of the Washington Examiner and the holder of an unprecedented newsweekly triple crown — nation editor at Time, editor of U.S. News and World Report, and executive editor of Newsweek from 1986 to 1991.

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Where once readers were content to sit back and wait for tempered accounts of domestic and foreign events, they now can find much of what they need almost instantaneously, on their smartphones. Where once advertisers had limited places to spend their dollars to reach national audiences, they now have seemingly unlimited alternatives.

So on Thursday, when Newsweek's current owners announced they intended to halt print publication and expand the magazine's Web presence, there was little surprise. But there was a good deal of nostalgia for what Smith called ''the shared conversation that the nation used to have,'' when the networks, the newsweeklies, and a few national newspapers reigned.

Before Newsweek, there was Time — the brainchild of Henry Luce and Briton Hadden. The first issue of the first newsweekly came out in 1923, and the formula, from the first, was to wrap up the week's news and tie it with a bow, telling it with a singular voice.

Newsweek — or as it was originally called, News-week — came along in 1933. The founding editor was Thomas Martyn. The first foreign editor of Time, he was British-born and had a single leg, having lost the other in the First World War.

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Martyn's magazine sold for 10 cents and was advertised as ''an indispensable complement to newspaper reading, because it explains, expounds, clarifies.''

The modern era at Newsweek began in 1961, when it was purchased by the Washington Post Co. Benjamin Bradlee, who was Newsweek's Washington bureau chief at the time and later executive editor of the Post, helped negotiate the sale.

Newsweek often struggled over the years, and the Post sold it to stereo equipment magnate Sidney Harman in 2010 for $1. He died the next year, but not before the magazine was joined to The Daily Beast Web operation.

Edward Kosner, who worked at Newsweek from 1963 to 1979, ending as executive editor, recalled the time as a kind of golden age of the newsweeklies.

''It's a lost world,'' he said. ''It's like talking about the 19th century."