As the final daily issue of the 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor was put to bed Thursday, the newspaper was planning its rebirth as a spruced-up weekly.
Meanwhile, the Monitor's free Web site will get more frequent updates from dozens of its reporters, who will be expected to quickly post material to the site and take video and gather audio.
Editor John Yemma hopes these changes will help the seven-time Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper boost its $12.5 million in annual revenue, even with the recession. The transition caps two years of preparations for the newspaper, whose average circulation is fewer than 50,000 — down from a peak of 223,000 in 1970.
The Boston-based nonprofit publication wants to lessen its reliance on subsidies, which totaled about $20 million last year. About $6.8 million came from its endowment fund and $13.3 million from its owner, the First Church of Christ, Scientist.
After the debut of the new weekly, dated April 12, subscriptions will cost $89 a year, down from $219 annually. But Yemma said that by moving to weekly from daily publication, the Monitor will reduce costs by $10 million. The Monitor also will sell an e-mail newsletter for a fee that has yet to be determined.
The 44-page weekly will have bold graphics, photographs and cartoons on paper that is slicker than newsprint but not as glossy as a typical magazine. It will have the newspaper's usual in-depth articles, and some columns that will not appear online. A core group of eight to 10 editors will help guide the print publication, down from about 25 in the daily version.
Other newspapers have been shifting online, with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer being the biggest example. But The Christian Science Monitor is a bit of special case.
The newspaper had been sold at newsstands but most copies were delivered to subscribers through the mail. The Monitor also sells relatively little advertising, another factor that makes it questionable how much this move is a potential prototype for other newspapers, said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute.
The Monitor's final front page, set to hit newsstands Friday, calls out "Farewell, Daily Print," with an explanation to readers that the newspaper's shift was "being watched by other news organizations, many of which are weighing changes of their own."
"Our three formats — Web, weekly, and e-mail — constitute today's version of the international daily newspaper that Mary Baker Eddy founded in 1908," Yemma wrote, referring to the founder of the church.
"Think of it this way: We are putting on new clothes for a new era, but we are the same Monitor, committed to the same objective we have adhered to since we were launched a century ago: `to injure no man but to bless all mankind.'"