So the Christain Science Monitor is going online only.  It’s a bold move that strikes some as ingenius and others as kind of a last ditch effort.  In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air,  John Yemma explains more about the strategy.  The full interview is available at the link below.  It’s actually interesting that NPR doesn’t provide a link to embedd their audio in other people’s blogs…but more on that later.

The big point is that, in the interview, Yemma outlines the strategy of going online basically to save money in printing, paper, and trucking.  In terms of content, he only speaks about shorter stories and a more casual writing style.  I think that this further proves that newspapers just don’t get it.  There’s no mention in the interview of linking into the rich content that already is out there online.  People tend to graze on content online, moving from site to site and returning to places that they see as good resources.  Newspapers tend to still want you to go to their site and stay there.

This isn’t to say that all content needs to be free and amateur, it just means that writers need to link their articles to the rest of the web illustrating their points through audio and video from other sites and provide context for their work.  True, newspaper like the New York Times do often cite websites in articles and these sites often crash from the traffic coming in, but they only do this when they’re talking specifically about websites.

Wouldn’t an article about an artist be made more rich with a YouTube video of that artist at work?  Wouldn’t the war in Gaza be made more imediate with amateur photography from a cell phone?  Woudn’t an audio interview be made more interesting with a commentary written online? (Hint, hint, NPR).

One site that gets it is boingboing.net which started out as essentially a true web log and has turned into a full-fledged magazine and TV station with perspectives on politics, technology, lifestyle and more.  (More on them later.)

There’s a business lesson to be learned here as well.  Companies often talk about ‘driving traffic’ to their site.  In fact, they really need to talk about reaching out and linking to other content out there.  It will make their site more interesting and engage them to the outside world.  Print has effected the way we think about communication and breaking that mindset is not easy.  We want to “capture” readers and “hold” their attention.  Now we really have to tap into the larger discussion online and become part of the conversation.

Interview description and link to the audio below:

Fresh Air from WHYY, January 12, 2009 · John Yemma, the editor of The Christian Science Monitor, discusses the paper’s new publication model: The Monitor is moving the daily operation to the Web and converting its print paper to a weekly.

Yemma joined the Monitor in June 2008 after more than 20 years at the The Boston Globe.

Listen here (Link)

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