10:45 am
The Beginning of the End
The Christian Science Monitor, one of only about five or six* genuinely national papers, announced yesterday that i no longer will publish a paper edition on a daily basis. It will continue to put out a weekly hard-copy print edition, but will focus on the web for its daily output.
The Monitor thus becomes the first major daily in the United States to move from a “newspaper” format to a “webpaper” one. Of course, there already are other outlets that have hugely successful (in terms of readership) web presences, including traditional media like the NYT and WaPo as well as web-only publications like the Huffington Post.
I have a soft spot for the Monitor: they published my first op-ed back in the early 1990s. Since I can remember, they have focused on international news, and have regularly produced thoughtful coverage. I wish them well, but frankly, I doubt they can succeed — they are going to find it as hard to find a foothold on the web as they did in the print world.
More importantly than the Monitor’s decision, chances are that when future historians write the print era’s obituary, October 28, 2008 will be remembered, perhaps not as the end, but certainly as the beginning of the end.
*By my count, the genuinely national (print) papers are The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, and, perhaps, The Los Angeles Times.