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 subsidised 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 per cent 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 per cent to 15 per cent 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 centre of it.” Eddy created the Monitor in her late 80s after Joseph Pulitzer's New York World called her incapable of managing her own affairs and spearheaded an unsuccessful attempt to have her institutionalised, the paper’s website said.
From the start, the newspaper made values part of its mission, according to the website, saying its motive was “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” It also insisted it published as a public service, not to spread the doctrine.
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The Christian Science Monitor won seven Pulitzer Prizes and continues to have writers in 11 countries, including Russia, China, France, the UK, Kenya, Mexico, Israel and India, the website said. Monitor readers will be offered a weekly printed publication and daily e-mail edition, the newspaper said on Wednesday on its website.
The Boston-based publication has lost subscribers for almost 40 years, according to the website. Circulation in the six months ended September 30 fell 1.7 per cent to 55,192 from 56,151 a year earlier, according to a report on Tuesday from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Readership peaked in 1970 at about 230,000, Yemma said.