Monday, November 3, 2008

A paper vanishes from the printing area - Christian Science Monitor

For many years now, it has been predicted that the online news arena will continue to have rapid growth, and giving new credence to the phrase, 'a zero sum game', this will also result in a decrease in the number of print newspapers out in the market. This has been happening to some extent, not with the shutting down of major print media publications, but with a decrease in the classifieds and advertisements. However, now there is a clear marker to the extent of this change. The Christian Science Monitor, a 100 year daily, is shutting down and will take on a internet only avatar.
They are offsetting this to some extent with the introduction of a new weekly physical edition, but it is not the same as having a thriving daily print edition. With this event, many other newspapers and media companies (especially ones that have shareholders) will be weighing the impact of this news and wondering as to when their turn will come:


Stop the press, it’s finally happened. A national American newspaper, with an illustrious 100-year publishing |history and seven Pulitzer prizes, has gone totally digital. Last week, the Boston-based The Christian Science Monitor announced its decision to shift its daily news business entirely on to the internet. In April of next year, The Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper begun in 1908, will stop printing its newspaper and will, instead, invest all its daily news resources into its enhanced, advertising supported www.CSMonitor.com website.
A hundred years later, the internet publishing platform, with its instant global reach and shrinking technology costs, has turned the news business upside down. In today’s online world of instant publishing, where news junkies are hooked on up-to-the-minute information and commentary, a daily newspaper, printed or otherwise, is quickly becoming both a cultural and economic anachronism.


This is indeed a major event, and will be heralded as a major indicator to the massive growth of the internet platform and point out the print version to be an anachronism.

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