It’s the end of an era for Peter Greenberg. Today Newsweek announced that it will publish online only in 2013 and former Senator George McGovern is near death. Read Peter’s blog to see the special place both the publication and the politician  had in his life.

Today I am in mourning. George McGovern is near death and Newsweek announced that after 80 years, it was ending its print edition at the end of December.

First, some background—I owe my career to Newsweek. I started writing for it when I was 20, as a “campus correspondent” at the University of Wisconsin. Within weeks, I was contributing to major cover stories on the anti-war movement in America, and then, miraculously, they hired me, as the youngest correspondent in the history of the magazine. Soon I was in the Los Angeles bureau, and did cover stories on everyone from Patty Hearst to Gary Gilmore, from Watergate to Howard Hughes. From Bette Midler to presidents, kings, princes and paupers, from football stars to political upheaval, the war in Vietnam, the return of the POWs, airport safety….there was never a dull moment.

Newsweek, as a magazine, was cutting edge. I admit that I am still old school. I like books, and don’t own a Kindle. I still have rotary phones (when the power fails, they still work), I read newspapers. I have an iPad, but hardly use it. And most important, I strongly believe in the power, and the necessity of the conversation. For so many years, Newsweek triggered the conversation, and today, sadly the conversation is about the death of the print version of the magazine.

It goes all online as of January. Will I read it? I doubt it.

When I was at Newsweek, we had bureaus in every major capital of the world. We didn’t have to parachute in with no local knowledge to cover a story. We were already there with great correspondents who knew their territory and their sources intimately.

It is particularly sad that the Newsweek announcement comes at the same time as the reports of the quickly deteriorating medical state of George McGovern. Hanging on the wall of my office in Los Angeles is a one-of-a-kind cover story for Newsweek. I helped to cover the McGovern campaign in 1972. But the cover of McGovern that hangs in my office is truly a one-of-a-kind — it is the one Newsweek cover that never ran.

But in 1972, we prepared one just in case the unexpected happened. It was a photo of George McGovern, with the headline “President Elect McGovern,” and “The Great Upset.” No one ever saw the cover, because McGovern lost the presidency by the largest landslide in history, to Richard Nixon. And there were only three copies in existence. one at Newsweek, one that was later given to McGovern, and the one I had…the rest of the cover stories — the ones that ran — still hang on my wall, and they will stay there, reminders to me of the way journalism used to be done — and distributed — and read.

Today, my thoughts are with the McGovern family, as well as with all the wonderful people at Newsweek who mentored me, worked with me, and fought in the trenches on the great stories we did around the world. And the real irony here, which sadly speaks volumes: You’re reading this online.

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By Peter Greenberg for PeterGreenberg.com