Newspaper Death Watch has an hour-long audio interview with John Yemma, the new editor at the Christian Science Monitor. Yemma's goal is to make the news gathering organization self-sustaining without giving up the deep think pieces for which it's known (and without relying on subsidies from the church). Is this is complicated or helped by the fact that Monitor's content is the exact opposite of the hyperlocal news regional papers are focusing on as the key turf to protect and expand? In fact, the Monitor's stock and trade international viewpoint is something that many smaller papers are eschewing as completely commoditized, even as many larger papers cut back drastically on national and international bureaus. Because of that, the need for what the Monitor does us certainly there, and I hope the business model is, too. Yemma says, "If you look at the success of Huffington Post or Slate, there is a model that works. While we’re going to do everything we can to grow on the print side, the quickest growth is on the Web. While there will always be a commitment to Monitor journalism on the print side, the idea is to do it more energetically on the Web."
Tags: newspapers
