I‘ve had a relationship with Newsweek magazine longer than I’ve known my husband, longer in fact than with nearly anyone I know, save my family.

I bought a subscription my freshman year in college and looked forward to its delivery each week, rolled up in my narrow mailbox at the post office. Some years ago, I landed an essay in the magazine’s My Turn column, setting off a firestorm of responses that garnered more mail than nearly any other essay in the history of the feature. (Note to the body mod community, don’t bother excoriating me. Been there, done that.)

And now this venerable weekly is up for sale, another casualty of the web. I feel especially guilty because a few days before I read the news of its sale, I’d decided not to renew our subscription. Not because I’m a convert to digital dailies but because I didn’t like the redesigned Newsweek — an eleventh-hour refashion of the magazine into a compendium of opinion pieces and themed articles. Alas, I had a lot of company.

News in a nanosecond is now rules the globe. News comes time stamped by the minute. We know what’s happening while it’s happening. We get tweeted and texted and blogged in less time than it takes to skim a masthead. Long gone are the days when a college freshman eagerly anticipated her first magazine subscription, putting off homework for just a bit while she caught up on the world both near and far.