Digital | featured news

Newsweek's decision to stop publishing a print edition after 80 years and bet its life entirely on a digital future may be more a commentary on its own problems than a definitive statement on the health of the magazine industry....

Newsweek will end its print publication after 80 years and shift to an all-digital format in early 2013. Its last U.S. print edition will be its Dec. 31 issue. The paper version of Newsweek is the latest casualty of a changing world where readers get more of their information from websites, tablets and smartphones. It's also an environment in which advertisers are looking for less expensive alternatives online.

Hollywood's switch from 35-millimeter film to digital movies is imperiling some small theaters that can't afford the new projectors. "We're faced with digital doomsday," says Jason Clark, owner of Parkhill Cinema, a three-screen theater in Tarboro, N.C. He's been told he needs to install three new digital projectors that cost $50,000 to $70,000 each by the end of 2013.

Four years ago, then-Sen. Barack Obama got a head start on Arizona Sen. John McCain when it came to reaching voters online, on their mobile phones and on social media. Young voters, the group most likely to tune in digitally to the presidential campaign, broke overwhelmingly for Obama, giving him the biggest margin of victory among that age group ever recorded....

Since clinching the Republican nomination two months ago, Romney advisers have significantly stepped up their digital campaign, hoping to catch up with President Obama in an arena he dominated in 2008. Romney has hired data analysts and mobile-app developers from places including Google and Apple, unwilling to concede the traditionally liberal-leaning Silicon Valley talent pool.

Google has reached a deal with a publishing group to allow the scanning and publishing of books online - ending a six-year legal battle. A court ruled in 2009 that the search company was in breach of copyright infringement after it digitised a number of French books.

Newspaper companies are trying to cut costs by shutting down the printing presses and laying off staff, but unless they have a strategy for managing the transition from print to digital, all they are doing is liquidating the goodwill of a generation of readers and advertisers.

With ebook sales on the rise, how is the publishing industry embracing the world of digital? Next week some of the biggest names in publishing will gather at the Hilton in London's Park Lane for The Bookseller Industry Awards.

The Social Security Administration is now providing workers with online statements of the estimated benefits they will get when they retire, replacing the paper ones the agency used to mail out. Until last year, the agency mailed yearly statements that showed the benefits a worker would collect if he or she retired at age 62, age 66 or age 70. It stopped the mailings to save an estimated $70 million a year.

Wednesday was a dark day for the future of books. The Department of Justice charged Apple and five large book publishers with conspiring to raise e-book prices. Three of the five publishers quickly capitulated rather than face the risk and expense of a protracted legal battle.