CS Monitor to Fold Daily Print Edition; Focus on Web

[brooklynite]

Source: Mediaweek

With newspapers on the decline as readers and advertisers shift online, The Christian Science Monitor will become the latest paper to stop publishing a daily print edition.

The Monitor will announce today that come April 2009, it will fold its tab-sized daily and relaunch as a glossy, oversized newsweekly format, while beefing up its Web site with more original reporting and frequent updates. The globally-focused newspaper also plans to create a daily, paid, e-mail edition that will include top Monitor stories, links to other stories and an original editor’s column.

The 100-year-old Monitor, whose circulation has declined to about 52,000 from a peak of more than 200,000 around 30 years ago, has an operating deficit of $18 million, said Jonathan Wells, managing publisher of the Monitor. He said that by scaling back the print schedule, the deficit is projected to go to $10 million within the next five years.

Wells said that he also expected print revenue losses associated with the folding of the daily edition to stabilize as print readers and advertisers migrate to the Monitor’s Web site, at CSMonitor.com, which he said receives 1.5 million unique monthly visitors. He said consumers polled in focus groups indicated that they value the Monitor’s global news focus but prefer a weekly publication delivered before the weekend, when they have more time to spend with it.

Read more: http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/magazines-newspapers/e3icc46e9fc32c62f063aba05049ec6ab0b

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Print publications are going to need to seriously find an effective way of generating revenue through online viewing.

[skooooo]

1. That's too bad...

I hope they can keep their reporters and writers.

[HeraldSquare212]

2. Becoming less timely is not a solution to the up-to-the-minute news on the internet.

[LTR]

3. Seems to make sense that they would convert to a weekly w/ online presence

They could probably go more in-depth that way. Plus, are that many people still buying/subscribing daily?

The Monitor is a pretty good resource. Good writing, and pretty unbiased.

[Sherman A1]

4. It's a sign of the times, but still sad

It will most likely mean some folks will be losing jobs and that is never a good thing. I like the CSM. I was getting their daily email, but somehow courtesy of the mysteries of the internet it no longer arrives in my email box.

[trof]

5. My journalism professor recommended CSM almost 50 years ago.

I was a journalism major at the University of Alabama in the late 50s and early 60s.
One of my professors said that the NYT and the CSM were the two best newspapers for national news in the country.
I read the online edition every morning.