How one unusual newspaper copes with new realities

An interesting column in the Boston Globe points to an unlikely model for beleaguered newspapers as they struggle with the bleeding away of core circulation and advertising revenue. Alex Beam writes that the Christian Science Monitor was forced, by similar circumstances to reinvent itself and it may well represent what the newspaper of the future will look like. He quotes the Monitor's managing publisher Jonathan Wells who says

"We had to face up to a lot of these economic pressures well before other newspapers."

The paper and its accompanying website have few ads, totalling revenue of not much more than a million dollars. He recalled that the paper once sold 160,000 copies and now sells 55,000 (in 2005, it was about 71,000). So how did it cope (besides shrinking back to a smaller format)? With only 110 staff, a comparatively small $28 million annual budget (covered in part by an endowment and a subsidy from the church it is named for) and 20 pages a day, it set out to distinguish itself.

What's in those 20, small-format pages? Book reviews, recipes, and a decent op-ed section. I read a sophisticated piece on the failure of George Bush's "relationship strategy," his notion that his great pals Vladimir Putin and Pervez Musharraf would help him sort out the world's problems. Expect to see a lot of front-page coverage of the Third World - e.g., "Strategic shift in North Africa militancy" - and plain old-fashioned scoops. Monitor reporter Alexandra Marks broke the story that Cindy McCain gilded the lily when she claimed, falsely, that Mother Teresa convinced her to adopt two orphans on a trip to Bangladesh.

And how did it do this?

• It continues to invest in foreign coverage and is selective about what it covers and how. It maintains 8 foreign correspondents as well as a well-staffed office in Washington and five national bureaus.
• It specializes in timely, analytical journalism. "Monitor news is different," says editor John Yemma. "It's humane, and it's committed. We are a newspaper of hope."
• It has concentrated on its website, considering it as first priority (electronic subs are second, the print edition third). The site gets slightly less than 1 million unique visitors a month. "It's not a website you would turn to for immediate news. Hurricanes, plane crashes, the he-said-she-said of electoral politics just doesn't register on csmonitor.com," says Beam.