The Saturday Evening Post will cease print publication after its January issue, ending a 205-year run that began in 1821. Publisher Joan Ser Vaas attributed the decision to rising production costs, declining advertising revenue, and shifting reader habits. The magazine, which once boasted 272-page issues weighing nearly two pounds and generating the equivalent of $29.2 million today from 214 national advertisers, will continue publishing new articles and fiction online. The archives, including iconic Norman Rockwell covers, will be preserved digitally.

The decision is deeply personal for Ser Vaas, 72, whose parents rescued the magazine from financial ruin in 1969. Her father, Beurt Ser Vaas, a Midwestern millionaire, and her mother, Cory Ser Vaas, a journalist and physician, winnowed debt and revamped content. "I think about my mother a lot, because she would kill me," Ser Vaas said. "She would not be happy, but she would understand."

The Post published giants like Jack London, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Pete Hamill, and Joan Didion. It also faced controversies, including a 1942 antisemitic series and a 1967 libel lawsuit by Wally Butts, former University of Georgia athletic director. Ser Vaas has digitized half a million pages and 3,500 covers, and remains hopeful a new buyer might resurrect the print edition.