Newsweek is an American weekly newsmagazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence, although both are much larger than the third of America's prominent weeklies, U.S. News & World Report. Newsweek is published in four English language editions and 12 global editions written in the language of the circulation region.

History

Newsweek magazine was launched in 1933 but really went into effect in 1935 by a group of U.S. stockholders "which included Ward Cheney, of the Cheney silk family, John Hay Whitney, and Paul Mellon, son of Andrew W. Mellon," according to America's 60 Families by Ferdinand Lundberg. The same book also noted in 1946 that "Paul Mellon's ownership in "Newsweek" apparently represented "the first attempt of the Mellon family to function journalistically on a national scale."

To launch Newsweek the group of original owners invested around $2.5 million. Other large Newsweek stockholders prior to 1946 were a public utilities investment banker named Stanley Childs and a Wall Street corporate lawyer and director of various corporations named Wilton Lloyd-Smith.

Originally News-Week, the magazine was founded by Thomas J.C. Martyn on February 17, 1933. That issue featured seven photographs from the week's news on the cover.

In 1937, Newsweek merged with the weekly journal Today, which had been founded in 1932 by former New York Governor and diplomat Averell Harriman, and Vincent Astor of the prominent Astor family. As a result of the 1937 Newsweek-Today merger deal, Harriman and Astor provided Newsweek with $600,000 in additional venture capital funds and Vincent Astor became both Newsweek's chairman of the board and its principal stockholder between 1937 and his death in 1959.

In 1937, Malcolm Muir took over as president and editor-in-chief. Muir changed the name to Newsweek, emphasized more interpretative stories, introduced signed columns, and international editions. Over time it has developed a full spectrum of news-magazine material, from breaking stories and analysis to reviews and commentary.

The magazine was purchased by the Washington Post Company in 1961. Newsweek is generally considered the most liberal of the three major newsweeklies, an assertion supported in a recent UCLA study on media point of view.

Circulation and branches

As of 2003, worldwide circulation is more than 4 million, including 2.7 million in the U.S. It also publishes editions in Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Rioplatense Spanish and Arabic, as well as an English language Newsweek International. The Bulletin (an Australian weekly until 2008) incorporated an international news section from Newsweek.