CSM to Move from Print to Only Online in 2009

The Christian Science Monitor announced yesterday that it will replace its daily print edition with its website – “an online publication that is updated continuously each day” – in April 2009.

The 100-year-old Monitor – a winner of seven Pulitzer Prizes and known for its in-depth international coverage – will be the first daily newspaper with a national audience to shift from print to electronic.

Said Mary Trammel, editor-in-chief of the Monitor: "This new, multiplatform strategy will secure and enlarge the Monitor's role in its second century."

While the Monitor's print subscriptions have trended downward for 40 years, according to Judy Wolff, chair of the Board of Trustees of The Christian Science Publishing Society: “Looking forward, the Monitor's Web readership clearly shows promise… We plan to take advantage of the Internet in order to deliver the Monitor's journalism more quickly, to improve the Monitor's timeliness and relevance, and to increase revenue and reduce costs. We can do this by changing the way the Monitor reaches its readers.

For one writer's view of a world without print, click here.

Libraries and other information provides better be ready to adapt to the future.