Christian Science Monitor To Drop Daily Print Publication, Go Online Only
DENISE LAVOIE writing in the Huffington Post, October 28, 2008

Pedestrians walk by the Christian Science Church in Boston Monday, Oct. 27, 2008. A century after it began publication, The Christian Science Monitor is giving up its daily print edition to focus on posting news online. The international newspaper, started in Boston by the founder of the Christian Science Church, plans to print its final daily editions in April. After that, it will print only a weekend edition. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

BOSTON — The Christian Science Monitor said Tuesday it will become the first national newspaper to drop its daily print edition and focus on publishing online, succumbing to the financial pressure squeezing its industry harder than ever.

Come April, the Boston-based general-interest paper _ founded in 1908 and the winner of seven Pulitzer Prizes _ will print only a weekend edition after struggling financially for decades, its editor announced Tuesday.
The Monitor's circulation has fallen from a peak of 223,000 in 1970 to about 50,000 now, while its online traffic has soared. The newspaper gets about 5 million page-views per month, compared with about 4 million five years ago and 1 million a decade ago.

The Monitor was one of the first newspapers in the country to put content online, beginning in 1995, when correspondent David Rohde was taken prisoner in Bosnia.
"Obviously, this is going to help with our costs, but it also enables us to put much more emphasis on the Web and basically put our reporting assets and our editorial assets where we think growth will be in a very tough industry in the future, which we think is the Web," said Editor John Yemma, who was The Boston Globe's multimedia editor before he moved to the Monitor in June.

Read the full story here.