The Christian Science Monitor is an atypical publication in many ways -- church-supported, small but loyal circulation base, minimal reliance on advertising. Add one more anomaly: Seven months after discontinuing its print edition, the Monitor is growing and thriving.
For starters, 93 percent of the 43,000 subscribers of the printed daily agreed to switch to a new weekly print magazine, Editor John Yemma told me in a phone interview. In the magazine's brief lifespan, its circulation has increased to 67,000 fully paid subscribers (at $89 a year). And another 18,000 trial subscribers are paying a reduced rate.
With the Web site now the place to get daily Monitorjournalism, page views are up about 20 percent from April (7.1 million) to October (8.5 million), Yemma said. Monthly unique visits have increased by an even higher percentage, he added, though that estimate varies greatly depending on how it's measured.
None of that means they're printing money in Boston's Back Bay. Financially, Yemma described the changes as "close to a wash": the money saved on printing, paper, distribution and a reduced staff balances the lower circulation revenue (subscriptions to the print daily went for $219 a year). Advertising revenue, a minor factor for the Monitor, was soft earlier this year but has started to trend up.
More than half the Monitor's budget, roughly $20 million a year, comes from income on an endowment and a subsidy from the Church of Christ, Scientist. That is well north of the budgets of even the biggest philanthropy-supported startups such as ProPublica, which will spend about $9 million this year. So Yemma and his business-side colleagues aim to generate a pre-targeted "revenue contribution" rather than turn a profit.
Aggressive and expensive marketing are behind the magazine's growth. At one point this summer when theMonitor conducted a full-scale direct-mail campaign, Yemma noted, it was practically alone among magazines.
The competitive landscape has helped as well, he said. WithU.S. News & World Report cutting back to monthly publication, he said, the Monitor has picked up subscribers looking for a weekly. And I think the Monitor, which takes a straight news approach, stands to harvest at least a few current Newsweek subscribers disgruntled with the magazine's new straining-to-be-clever commentary.
Regular polling has confirmed that Monitor readers want a "stronger news orientation" rather than off-the-news essays, Yemma said, and the new Monitor retains the old's international orientation with eight bureaus abroad.
Yemma described in an earlier Biz Blog post the difficulty for reporters and editors to adapt to a structure in which print deadlines have disappeared. "It's still a daily learning experience," he told me Friday.
The site is updated frequently, Yemma continued, but "not totally around the clock" -- mostly from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. They pick their shots on video and multimedia, running a little less than planned after rough-and-ready mo-jo work by former print correspondents generated disappointing traffic.
One of the site's big splashes has been a yearlong multimedia series, "Little Bill Clinton," tracking a young Congolese immigrant named Bill Clinton Hadan as he makes his way through third grade in America.
Yemma describes himself as "a big skeptic on paid [online] content," and the Monitor is not going that way anytime soon. The Monitor doesn't face the same financial dilemma on this as most papers, considering there is no daily print subscriber base to cannibalize and no substantial advertising base to protect online or in print.
Yet the Monitor has made a modest foray into paid content: the Daily Briefing, a three-page PDF e-mailed to subscribers at 5 a.m. each morning that costs $7 a month. Yemma said it has picked up 1,800 subscribers without much promotion -- typically older readers who use e-mail but don't read much online. The briefing is a mini-version of a traditional daily, with a hierarchy of stories the editors think most important and a brief commentary by Yemma or Managing Editor Marshall Ingwerson.
The reshaped online/print combo honors Yemma's pledge when he announced the changes a year ago -- that this would be the same Monitor in editorial philosophy, only in new dress. The Monitor openly advocates all things green and has a tilt to positive, solution-oriented reporting. It is serious but not totally above the fray of pop culture.
The Monitor did Letterman, did balloon boy and has been heavy on the Fox News-Obama administration feud. When I asked if he was taking a pass on Steve Phillips' messy affair, however, Yemma said, "Who's Steve Phillips?" (He's an ESPN commentator and former New York Mets executive.)
The Monitor also covered Kanye West's rant at the Grammys and related incidents of incivility. That sparked some reader complaints, which Yemma addressed in a six-months-in column: "Well, clearly Mr. West's antics aren't the same kind of news as climate change or Afghanistan. But civility in public life is a subject worth exploring. ... News is, in part, what people are talking about and thinking about. TheMonitor will provide news that is factual and fair. Even fun. We can do fun."
Maybe Yemma was channeling a bit of fun that's in the air at the Monitor's offices these days. The story there is a whole lot more cheerful than most in the industry -- though, given the special circumstances, it doesn't necessarily chart a path for others.
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