Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Print Is Dead. Again.

The Monitor Ends Daily Print Edition
After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The cost-cutting measure makes The Monitor the first national newspaper to largely give up on print.

The paper is currently published Monday through Friday, and will move to online only in April, although it will also introduce a weekend magazine. John Yemma, The Monitor’s editor, said that moving to the Web only will mean it can keep its eight foreign bureaus open while still lowering costs.

“We have the luxury — the opportunity — of making a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years,” Mr. Yemma said

Emphasis added by me.

Oh, it's going to be brutal. The economy itself will force changes, not just the impetus of the Internet.

At some point, say when the Sony Reader has added wireless, we'll see a new thing: I'm coining it ePrint. Formatted editions for e-reading devices. As great as access to the Internet is, there is still no device that can deal with web pages that are formatted for desktop monitors. The iPhone tries, but it's still not good enough.

The Christian Science Monitor now joins Playgirl.

-- Via Twitter from michaelcasey

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