The sale of Newsweek was put in motion in May, when WaPo hired Allen & Co. to explore the possible deals. The magazine was founded in 1933 and acquired by WaPo in 1961. But over the past few years, the newsweekly model began to appear creaky next to the speed of online, which siphoned off readers and ad dollars. Although most magazines have been impacted by the transition to digital, Newsweek appeared to suffer more, especially as its parent company began relying more on its Kaplan education business for revenue and profits.

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Still, Newsweek has had and continues to have special problems compared to its print brethren, which have experienced something of a recovery this past year. Newsweek’s revenues sank 30 percent in Q4, while in Q1, revs fell 36 percent—quite the opposite of what many of its competitors were seeing. At the time of the May announcement, Graham said, “The losses at Newsweek in 2007-2009 are a matter of record. Despite heroic efforts on the part of Newsweek’s management and staff, we expect it to still lose money in 2010. We are exploring all options to fix that problem. Newsweek is a lively, important magazine and website, and in the current climate, it might be a better fit elsewhere.”

Bids for Newsweek were first due in June. WaPo rejected many of the offers before barely taking a glance. For example, it did not seriously consider the bid from the right-leaning Newsmax Media— it was deemed too ideological, and WaPo hoped to keep Newsweek’s liberal establishmentarian approach intact. Avenue Capital Group was ignored because of its association with The National Enquirer—too tabloidy. Among the prospective buyers that were taken seriously, Fred Drasner, previously a partial owner of the Washington Redskins and a publisher of The New York Daily News, was rejected for wanting to cut the magazine’s staff too deeply. Other names that were mentioned but ultimately went nowhere included OpenGate Capital, and the hedge fund operators Thane Ritchie and Marc Lasry.

Meacham Out?: Newsweek Editor-in-Chief Jon Meacham has offered to resign, the NY Post reports, citing unidentified sources. Meacham has been the mag’s editor for four years and through it all, has kept up a high profile of authoring political history books and appearing on talk shows like Bill Maher’s Real Time. In a bit of excellent timing, he appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart the same day the WaPo announced Allen & Co.‘s hire. (See clips and commentary here). Business Insider posted an item earlier that speculated Meacham’s salary as editor was $800,000, though that appeared to be unconfirmed.