The Washington Post Co. announced today it will sell Newsweek, which it purchased in 1961. The company is going public with the news in order to engage as many potential buyers as possible, said the company's chairman, Donald E. Graham.

"We have reported losses in the tens of millions for the last two years," Graham said in a staff meeting this morning, according to Newsweek. "Outstanding work by Newsweek's people has significantly narrowed the losses in the last year and particularly in the last few months. But we do not see a path to continuing profitability under our management."

He said the company's goal is a "rapid sale to a qualified buyer." However, when negotiating a deal, the company will also consider the news magazine's future and the future of its employees.

Graham said the company expects Newsweek to continue losing money in 2010, but due to the current economy, it "might be a better fit elsewhere." Last year, Newsweek lost US$28 million; however, when it was redesigned and relaunched last year, it was originally believed that it had about three years to figure out how to break even, according to the New York Observer.

Newsweek Inc. Managing Director Ann McDaniel told staff that the magazine's upcoming redesign of its Web site will make the brand even stronger. "Advertisers like what we are doing and are paying a higher premium for it. Our business processes are better than they have ever been," she said, according to Newsweek.

The title's editor, Jon Mecham, told the Observer he has received two voicemails from "two billionaires" after the news was announced. He also said he will look into finding bidders in order to buy the magazine himself.

"We have to figure out what journalism is going to be as the old business model collapses all around us," he said.

Mortimer Zuckerman, who publishes U.S. News & World Report, another U.S. news magazine, told BusinessWeek in an e-mail that "the nature of print publishing has mandated change." He did not say if he plans to bid on the title.

The possible sale raises the larger issue of future of newsweeklies, Charles Whitaker, head of magazine journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, told The New York Times.

"The era of mass is over, in some respect," he said. "The newsweeklies, for so long, have tried to be all things to all people, and that's just not going to cut it in this highly niche, politically polarized, media-stratified environment that we live in today."