Nearly a year after Newsweek published what it called its final print edition, the magazine has announced it will begin producing a weekly print edition as early as January.

Newsweek editor in chief Jim Impoco told The New York Times on Tuesday that the new magazine would be "a premium product, a boutique product" – with a higher price than its predecessor. He said the publication plans to rely more on subscribers instead of advertisers to support production costs.

“It’s going to be a more subscription-based model, closer to what The Economist is compared to what Time magazine is,” Impoco said. The new 64-page print edition of Newsweek will come off the presses in January or February, he said. With a target circulation of 100,000 in its first year, its sights are set considerably lower than the original print magazine, which in 2010 sold roughly 1.5 million copies a week.

Newsweek ran what its "final" print issue on 31 December 2012, in a move designed to save the company $40m a year. An online-only magazine called Newsweek Global was introduced in its place.

Newsweek has undergone multiple restructures since its 1991 peak of 3.3m readers. After 49 years of ownership, The Washington Post Company sold Newsweek to audio equipment billionaire Sidney Harman for $1 in 2010. Harman also assumed at least $40m in liabilities with the purchase.

The magazine was then merged with The Daily Beast, whose editor Tina Brown took over. She sold the company to IBT Media in August.

IBT Media is the proprietor of digital publication The International Business Times, founded in 2006 by Etienne Uzac, a London School of Economics graduate from France. When the acquisition was announced, Uzac said: "Having a brand with that kind of global recognition will open doors for IBT, which is growing but still a young company.”

The decision to resurrect Newsweek's print edition comes as New York magazine, a longtime establishment in weekly magazines, announced it will cut down its print issues to twice a month.