December 31 will be the last paper issue of Newsweek magazine. Next year would have been Newsweek’s 80th anniversary — technically, it still will be, though by then it will be an online-only entity. At that point, its content will become even more closely entwined with the news and opinion web site The Daily Beast. Tina Brown merged the two in 2010, and became the top editor of both. This morning Brown indicated the end of the print edition at Newsweek will mean considerable job losses.

Michael Isikoff, who reported for Newsweek from 1994 until 2010 and broke a number of the era’s biggest cover stories, shares his thoughts on the end of Newsweek in print and what the magazine meant to staffers and readers over the years.

“It really is an end of an era, Newsweek was a cultural, political force and journalistic force in this country for many, many years,” says Isikoff, “I remember as a kid growing up, waiting for the Newsweeks to arrive in the mail, and rifling through them — how they shaped my thinking of the world.”