After a hundred years of continuous publication, the esteemed daily newspaper The Christian Science Monitor, a seven-time Pulitzer Prize winner, has announced that it will almost entirely transition to the internet, reports the portal jutarnji.hr.
Specifically, the newspaper, which currently publishes from Monday to Friday, will exist exclusively in online form during the week starting in April next year, and will only publish a printed magazine on Sundays. Publishers claim that this way they will be able to maintain their eight foreign bureaus while simultaneously reducing costs. „We have the privilege – the opportunity – to take a step that all newspapers will have to take in the next five years“, stated editor John Yemma. The Monitor has so far been somewhat of an exception in journalism. It was funded by the church and distributed by mail. Thanks to its good reputation, it was very influential in the publishing world; however, its circulation has fallen from 220,000 in the 1970s to just 52,000.
The publishing industry will certainly be closely monitoring this Monitor experiment. „Everyone is talking about new models“, Yemma said. „This is a new model“. However, Lou Ureneck, chair of the journalism department at Boston University, explained that it is difficult to replicate this model for other newspapers because the Monitor was non-profit, while other newspapers are not. However, he confirmed that newspaper organizations will have to become smaller. Analysts also warn that publishers still cannot give up print editions as they account for 92 percent of total revenue. Although savings could be made on paper, printing, and transportation, these savings are currently not enough to cover the loss of that revenue.
