Headlines & Deadlines: PNA's Weekly Newsletter

The weekly newsletter of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association

Oct. 30, 2008

MANSI Media, Oct. 30

Ad Geek: Christian Science Monitor to end daily publication

By Matthew Caylor, Account Executive, Interactive
MANSI Media, (717) 703-3040

You've probably heard the news: Christian Science Monitor will be dropping its main print edition in favor of an online option. Is this announcement pointing to a shift in the newspaper industry?

It was announced Oct. 28, that the Monitor will become an online publication in April as a way to cut the rising costs of newspaper production. But will the cost savings generated by foregoing newsprint and its associated costs be enough to offset the loss in print advertising?

The management of the Monitor believes so. With the cuts the paper plans to keep its eight foreign bureaus open and assures future profitability. Although the paper expects some job cuts with the switchover, Editor John Yemma has said there will be no “draconian” lay-offs as the Monitor enters this new stage. Other papers may find it hard to benchmark the success of this move, since the Monitor is an anomaly in the business, operating as a nonprofit and generating the bulk of its print revenue from subscription fees and not advertising. The average newspaper generates 90 percent of its income from its printed edition, according to the Newspaper Association of America. For these papers the money saved in newsprint and production would not come close to offsetting the loss in advertising revenue.

Yet as more and more papers invest in their online products, a change in the newspaper business strategy is coming. As Yemma was quoted in The New York Times, “We have the luxury – the opportunity – of making the leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years.”

The Christian Science Monitor will be one of the largest publications to make this transition, but by no means the first. Earlier this year the Kentucky Post closed the doors on its print product and re-emerged as KYPost.com to serve the same audience, albeit online. Was this move a success? If you look at the amount of traffic on the site, then yes, it has been a success. When the Post closed down print operations it had a daily circulation of 27,000. At last count, KYPost.com was receiving 181,153 unique visitors a month. That is a growth in readership when many papers are seeing a decline in circulation, all while cutting the cost of print production.

In Pennsylvania we have another example of newspapers going online, except in this case there never was a print component. GantDaily.com is the digital newspaper covering Clearfield, Dubois and growing to cover other parts of the Western Pennsylvania market. As the president of GantDaily.com, Christene Dahlem, said about the strengths of online papers, “I believe the major advantage that a total web-based platform has over the traditional print format is the lower operating costs…there are no production or intermediary distribution channels.” This allows for another advantage as Dahlem pinpoints, “The versatility of the medium allows for timeliness and relevance of news, and the web’s ability to knock down geographical boundaries and reach more readers.”

Online-only editions do have a number of detractors -- with their lack of tactile involvement and low coupon success rate the medium is not for every advertiser. Still, while the media environment continues to fragment and production costs continue to rise, newspapers need to be aware of these options and possibilities.