The Weekly Reader to be folded into Scholastic News

The New York Post reports that Scholastic, which acquired the Weekly Reader earlier this year, is folding the newspaper into its Scholastic News, and has laid off all but five of the Weekly Reader's employees. The Weekly Reader, which was founded as Current Events magazine in 1902, had 13 million subscribers at its peak. Scholastic acquired the newspaper from the Reader's Digest Association in February for between $10 and $20 million. It was acquired by private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings in 1999 for approximately $310 million, then merged with Reader's Digest five years ago.