Begin forwarded message:
From: "Chris Gulker" <cg@gulker.com>
Date: October 29, 2008 12:10:20 AM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Christian Science Monitor to End Daily Print Edition (Update3)
Spouse Linda and I had been in the daily newspaper biz for, um, some 40 years - neither of us is surprised to see the ever-accelerating crash in print dailies. Linda, smarter and wiser than I, worked on both the newsroom and business side - she saw, and I guessed at an industry that was locked into a business model that had worked for something like 150 years, and which just couldn't see, or didn't want to see, a very big turn in the media road.
Subscriptions (too expensive to acquire and service with bits), display ads (gobbled first by TV, now by the net) and classifieds (gone to Craigslist) were pillars of these former cash cows.
The real tragedy is that great newsrooms (e.g. the Post and the Times) do provide something that even the most talented bloggers can't manage (travel budgets, literate copy editors, fact checkers, paychecks and a necessary check on government excess), but newspaper business operations never made the investment to get, or, maybe, never listened to the people who saw this coming.
It's a little late to start figuring out the business model: this little 10-or-so year-old Mountain View, Ca. company beat 'em all to it. And they already have a news operation: it's a software robot that depends, heavily, on what remains of the world's newsrooms.
The hopeful note in the previous post was the CSM editor's quote: "The next century's model has to be one where print is not at the center of it.." It's a start, anyway.
Anyway, $.02 from an aging print journalist turned blogger...
--
Chris Gulker
cg@gulker.com
On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:32 PM, David Farber <dave@farber.net> wrote:
Christian Science Monitor to End Daily Print Edition (Update3)
2008-10-28 21:16:35.850 GMT
(Adds historical details starting in first paragraph.)
By Tim Mullaney
Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- The Christian Science Monitor, the
newspaper started 100 years ago by church founder Mary Baker
Eddy, will stop printing a daily edition next year to focus on
the Internet, the first national newspaper to take such a step.
The move follows years of losses at the non-profit
newspaper, which is subsidized by the Church of Christ,
Scientist. The Monitor expects to lose $18.9 million in the year
ending April 30. Its annual budget is $34 million, Editor John
Yemma said in an interview.
While some newspapers have dropped Monday editions to save
money, the Monitor's shift to Web-only isn't likely to be copied
soon by larger, for-profit dailies. Online ads provide no more
than 10 percent of sales at most newspapers, too little to
support editorial staffs, said John Morton, president of the
consulting firm Morton Research Inc. in Silver Spring, Maryland.
``There may come a time when you can envision it happening,
but not soon,'' Morton said. ``The model is still substantially
based on print.''
The Monitor will probably cut its editorial staff of 95 by
10 percent to 15 percent as part of the transition, Yemma said.
The newspaper will initially lose more money by giving up the
$240-a-year print subscription than it will save, he said.
``We hope to make it up,'' Yemma said. ``The next century's
model has to be one where print is not at the center of it.''
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