Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev Pragad, the president and chief executive officer (CEO), and Johnathan Davis, who sits on the board; each owns 50% of the company.

In August 2010, revenue decline prompted the Washington Post Company to sell Newsweek to audio pioneer Sidney Harman for one US dollar and an assumption of the magazine's liabilities. Later that year, Newsweek merged with the news and opinion website The Daily Beast, forming The Newsweek Daily Beast Company, later called NewsBeast. Newsweek was jointly owned by the estate of Harman and the company IAC. Newsweek continued to experience financial difficulties, leading to the suspension of print publication at the end of 2012.

In 2013, IBT Media, the owner of the International Business Times, acquired Newsweek from IAC; the acquisition included the Newsweek brand and its online publication, but did not include The Daily Beast. IBT Media rebranded itself as Newsweek Media Group and in 2014 relaunched Newsweek in both print and digital form. In 2018, the company split into Newsweek Publishing and IBT Media. The split was accomplished one day before the Manhattan District Attorney indicted IBT Media co-owner Etienne Uzac on fraud charges.

News-Week was launched in 1933 by Thomas J. C. Martyn, a former foreign news editor for Time. He obtained financial backing from 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". Paul Mellon's ownership in News-Week marked "the first attempt of the Mellon family to function journalistically on a national scale". The group of original owners invested around US$2.5 million (equivalent to $60.73 million in 2024). Other large stockholders prior to 1946 were public utilities investment banker Stanley Childs and Wall Street corporate lawyer Wilton Lloyd-Smith.

Journalist Samuel T. Williamson served as the first editor-in-chief of News-Week. The first issue of the magazine was dated February 17, 1933. Seven photographs from the week's news were printed on the first issue's cover. In 1937, News-Week merged with the weekly journal Today, which had been founded in 1932 by future New York Governor and diplomat W. Averell Harriman and Vincent Astor of the prominent Astor family. As a result of the deal, Harriman and Astor provided $600,000 (equivalent to $13,124,000 in 2024) in venture capital funds, and Vincent Astor became both the chairman of the board and its principal stockholder between 1937 and his death in 1959.^{[citation needed]}

In 1937, Malcolm Muir took over as president and editor-in-chief. He changed the name of the magazine to Newsweek, emphasized interpretive stories, introduced signed columns, and launched international editions.^{[citation needed]}

The magazine was purchased by The Washington Post Company in 1961. Osborn Elliott was named editor of Newsweek in 1961 and became the editor-in-chief in 1969.

In 1970, Eleanor Holmes Norton represented sixty female employees of Newsweek who had filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Newsweek had a policy of allowing only men to be reporters. The women won the suit with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Newsweek agreed to allow women to be reporters. The day the claim was filed, Newsweek's cover article was "Women in Revolt", covering the feminist movement; the article was written by a woman who had been hired on a freelance basis since there were no female reporters at the magazine.