Newsweek deployed editor-in-chief Tina Brown to the morning shows today to spin the end of the struggling weekly’s print edition as a brave step into the 21st century. Despite inevitable layoffs, Brown titled her memo announcing the changes “A Turn of the Page for Newsweek” and dubbed it “an important development.” Today on Morning Joe, she stressed, “We decided to take the plunge, we wanted to take on the future.” But IAC chairman Barry Diller, left paying for the magazine after the billionaire heirs of Sidney Harman abandoned ship, dropped all pretense: “It was a mistake to take this one on,” he told the New York Times, citing print-ad numbers that were “not sustainable,” and adding, “It became completely self-evident that we couldn’t print the magazine anymore.”
