The Christian Science Monitor has just announced that they will be the first national newspaper in the U.S. to go all digital, according to an article in the New York Times. Its regular weekday publication will now only be on their website, but they will start a new weekly print magazine.
It's hard to say what this means for the industry as a whole. The Monitor is a nonprofit organization funded by the First Church of Christ, Scientist, so it's always had a different business model, but this move has been spurred on by market forces any editor can relate to: a declining subscription base and financial belt-tightening.
Will print newspapers soon be a thing of the past? Maybe. I'm a news junkie but I get almost all my news from major websites such as CNN, BBC, and the Guardian, all of which I check daily. I buy an actual paper maybe twice a month. I bet most people younger than I am could say the same thing.
With the latest scary report on the environment, killing a few million fewer trees every year might not be a bad idea.
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