A venerable old weekly print news mag (it was reduced to monthly in November 2008) is riding off into it's last sunset (the last issue is this month)...

BUT, the U.S. News & World Report will re-appear in digital clothes with an expanded online edition that will appear 8 times per year and definitly include it's famous "list" issues...you remember them: the best colleges, hospitals, etc.

Here is a great eulogy delivered by big fan Greg Brown of FOLIO magazine:

Right about now, you should be getting your last printed copy of U.S. News & World Report.

Sad, isn't it? I grew up a fan of the old weekly. I was reading "Washington Whispers" while most of my high school friends were flipping through ratty comic books or talking about MTV.

I looked down a bit on Newsweek and Time as hopelessly sleepy, middle-of-the-road books. Reading USN&WR was like belonging to a club. An annoying, smarty-pants club. The closest thing to it, probably, was The Economist, and I wouldn't geek out that much for another few years.

I won't miss it.

Why? Well, because, frankly, I don't miss it now. I haven't subscribed in years. I am part of the problem: They had me young (the marketer's dream) and now I'm in the thick of my earning years. Yet you won't find U.S. News in my house. I read a few mags here and there, but not one "newsweekly."

It's simple really. If TV has become a form of Internet for the disconnected, then newsweeklies are even further behind the curve. I can't read newspapers and print anymore. I read way, way too much online, all the time. Nearly anything and everything you care to print and mail to me, I have already seen, absorbed, and likely forgotten.

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