The Christian Science Monitor will end weekday publication of its print edition next April, concentrating on a daily Web model.

The Monitor will also be adding a Sunday magazine. Please excuse the wildly-misleading New York Times headline that says the Monitor will be online only. In fact, the new magazine will cost more per issue than the old weekday publication.

The Sunday magazine will cost $89 for a years subscription, while the old five-day-a-week print edition cost $219 a year. That translates to more than double the subscription revenue per issue. The idea is to make the print product more valuable per edition (for both readers and advertisers), while also shedding much of the printing and distribution costs that plague daily publication.

Part of this transition includes upgrades to the Monitor Web site, CSMonitor.com, (which makes perfect sense). From the press release about the upgrades:

Original reporting on global news and events seven days a week

Continuously updated stories

Global conversations between readers and Monitor staff

Links to valuable content elsewhere on the Web

Top editor John Yemma said a decision on the future of the Monitor was coming this fall in the podcast I had with him a week ago. At the time, he said the Monitor was considering either adding a weekend edition on top of its weekday publishing or going to a model that focuses on online with a weekly news magazine.

The Monitor went with the latter, more logical option. This is what the weekly magazine will feature:

The Monitor’s well-regarded analysis of both US and global news

Weekly snapshots of life around the globe and news around the Web

Profiles of individuals who are tackling tough problems and trying to make a difference

Special emphasis on the environment, innovation, money & values

This is a model I have been trying to sell people on for more than a year now (and brought up at ONA 08 to the “super panel.” The idea was essentially scoffed at by some execs at dying print publications). Here is why I have championed this model:

• Daily reporting on the Web — Newspapers all across the world are filled with old news. Print publications are ill suited to break news and to report on news as it is happening.
• Analysis pieces once a week — Daily reporting is not always the best way to look at the bigger picture or to provide historical context. This is where strong, thoughtful and, yes, often long analysis pieces come into play. This is the kind of reporting that belongs in print. I may not want to spend a few hours reading about one subject online (I’ll get distracted quickly), but I am willing to devote much more time to print, especially on weekends. I’ll say it again, I love the Economist magazine.
• Synergyrent a car bulgaria — Top editors like to prentend like their employees don’t waste time, but they do — a lot of time and resources. And what are they wasting time doing? Duplicating content for print and the Web. A lot of the beat bloggers I work with complain that they have to “re-report” news for the print edition after they post it online. This often means reconfiguring a story to fit into the print model. It might mean finding “man on the street quotes.” And it can mean finding ways to explain things in print that simple links do much better on the Web. All of this means, however, wasted time and resources. But if print doesn’t care about breaking news, this isn’t an issue.

I think the Monitor’s new model could work very well for a lot of publications. At the minimum, we’ll learn a lot within a year from now how much this new model makes sense and where it can take traditional news media.

When historians come to write the history of the newspaper industry over the last two decades, they’ll talk about how newspaper companies squandered it all with a series of unfortunate — and often short sighted — decisions.

I want you to read what Alan Mutter had to say about newspapers in his latest blog post. Think about this for a second:

If newspapers had invested in new products even a modest fraction of the bodacious profits they reaped in the last decade and a half, they might have invented anything from MarketWatch to Yelp to Google.

Instead, publishers concentrated on accelerating profits to lift the stock prices that determined their bonuses and/or borrowed what proved to be dangerously large sums of money to buy more of the newspapers they regarded as perpetual money-making machines.

Most newspaper companies are still money-making machines, with profits that far outpace the typical Fortune 500 company. The problem? Massive debt burdens.

Cheap credit earlier this decade led a lot of newspaper companies to make a lot of really bad decisions (well, a lot of industries are facing this same problem right now). Companies were gobbling up newspapers left and right, and now those acquisitions are worth a fraction of what they paid for them. Many of them are simply over leveraged now.

To put this in perspective, Journal Register Co., a publisher that already has defaulted on its reckless debt, still generated a 16.9% operating margin in the last 12 months. That surpasses the margins in the same period of such companies as Exxon (15.7%), General Electric (14.2%), Boeing (8.7%), Wal-Mart (5.8%) and Amazon.Com (4.7%).

This vapid struggle to remain profitability may be the final nail in the coffin for several over-leveraged newspaper companies:

The bitter irony for the newspaper industry is that the desperate reductions in staffing and newshole are compromising dangerously the quality of the products that built each of its valuable franchises. The compromises, which typically dismay most loyal and discerning newspaper readers, are likely to speed the declines in circulation and sales that are the root cause of industry’s faltering profitability.

If you’re a newspaper reader, how much longer will you consume a product that is continuously getting worse? Less news, shorter stories, more ads, less sections, etc.

The Washington Post and The New York Times are two papers that are not owned by over leveraged companies. Their brands have remained strong during these troubled times. Many smaller publications like weeklies are doing fine as well.

But the papers of Tribune, McClatchy, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Journal Register, Lee Enterprises, et al?

Not so much.

Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

John Yemma, the editor of The Christian Science Monitor, discussed with me his thoughts on the future of newspapers in my latest podcast.

Yemma and I discussed several topics. What’s clear is that newspapers will continue to evolve in the coming years as Web operations become more important for news operations. Some newspapers will see more of a revolution than evolution.

Yemma believes that many newspapers will be changing drastically in the coming years from the products they produce to how they are staffed. He envisions many papers publishing on less days. The first day to drop may be Saturday, because newspapers could make a joint weekend edition.

Sunday is the most popular day of the week, while Saturday is one of the weakest for most papers. The Monitor is looking at either adding a weekend edition or perhaps dropping down to once a week.

Environmental concerns about newspapers have been raised by some people, and Yemma believes the carbon footprint of print is driving away some younger readers. Trees have to be cut down, paper pulp made in factories and then the paper has to be printed with ink and distributed via trucks.

In addition, he also talks about the “guilt” that many people feel because many daily subscribers don’t read the paper daily. A lot of people are too busy to read a newspaper daily, and they don’t like looking at unread newspapers piling up on their floors.

“If you don’t read it because you’re too busy, after five days you look in the recycling bin and you see four days of newspapers that you have at most browsed the front page headlines, all of that makes it difficult to imagine from a user point of view that this is a very friendly product,” he said.

Yemma thinks in the short term we’ll see more newspapers go to once a week and longer term he can envision a future in which future Kindle and iPhone-like products replace printed products. E-Ink products like the Kindle and other E-readers are in their infancy. Color E-Ink will eventually be a reality and the price of readers will fall.

The the Kindle 3.0 might make a very attractive product for reading news content. And, remember, there is a difference between E-Ink and computer monitors. E-Ink has no back light, and it’s easy on the eyes like paper. Many people like me suffer from eyestrain when we view computer monitors for too long.

The Kindle might provide an alternative product for people who don’t want to stare at a computer screen all day. E-readers are also much lighter than even the lightest laptops and can be easily held in one hand like a book or newspaper. As delivery becomes more problematic for newspapers, E-readers might become a more attractive delivery method.

“I don’t know exactly where print goes in the long run,” he said. “Certainly some great brand names like The New York Times and others will keep up the full run of print for a long time to come.”

Delivery costs are weighing more and more on newspapers. Not only have gas prices soared in recent years, but so have paper and ink costs.

“I think print becomes increasingly problematic longer term because of delivery,” he said. “I’m not going to say that print is dead, but it’s not looking great.”

Yemma said many metro newspapers have suffered because they have tried to be a one-stop shop, providing a breadth of topics covered, but not a lot of depth.

“I think everyone knows the model is broken, and I think everyone is going through a fundamental review,” he said about print. “The old way until 2002 was that metropolitan newspapers were essentially monopolies.”

Some other topics discussed:

• How has the credit crunch and financial situation impacted the Monitor and other news organizations?
• What are the bright spots ahead for journalism? Why should people be excited for the future of journalism?
• What kind of two-way communication does the Monitor have right now, and what are they planning for the future?
• And much more.
• Click here to stream the interview. Or download the MP3.

You don’t need a fancy new CMS, a new editor in chief, new business model or prayer to start innovating today.

This month’s Carnival of Journalism, hosted by Will Sullivan over at Journerdism, asks a very pragmatic question:

What are small, incremental steps one can make to fuel change in their media organization?

Pragmatic questions need pragmatic answers.

Stop wasting money on software and IT you don’t need:

Times are tight, right? Then why does every one of your employees have a copy of the full Microsoft Office Suite? A lot of those people probably hardly ever touch it, and those that do use the software could probably get away with a much cheaper software solution.

Don’t waste money on IT spending that you don’t need to spend, especially on software that makes you less productive. Most of your employees could do everything they need to from Google Docs. Google Docs is either free or cheap ($50 a seat for the premium version per year), and it allows for powerful collaboration.

News organizations are now trying to cater to different audiences — print, Web and mobile. It’s hard to properly disseminate content to those different streams without good collaboration.

Google Docs has fantastic collaboration built in. It could save a lot of time spent sending e-mails back and forth, and even — gasp — time spent in e-mail. Teams can share documents for specific projects. 

I use Google Docs for everything I do on BeatBlogging.Org. I love how no matter what computer I’m on, I can have access to all my documents. I love how easy it is to share documents with people. I love the simplicity. 

When I worked at Stars and Stripes, I had a full copy of Microsoft Office. There is nothing that I ever did there that I couldn’t do with Google Docs. In fact, I still used Google Docs when I wanted to share documents with other employees.

Yes, some of your employees probably need Office because it does have features that Google Docs doesn’t have, but the vast majority of your employees don’t need it. Regardless, Google Docs will help with work flow. 

Create a culture of learning, everyday:

This isn’t as far out as it sounds. Sign up for Lynda.com and similar sites. Purchase books on HTML, CSS, Flash and other tools. Encourage your employees to subscribe to RSS feeds of sites like This Week in Django.

Have your employees sign up for free blogging accounts at WordPress.com or a similar site. Have them sign up for Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. The only way to understand social networking is to get out there and do it.

Allocate a few hours each week when employees are expected to spend time learning new skills and tools. Encourage your employees to spend their down time at work learning. Allow your employees to take courses while they are at home.

Let’s make it easy for our employees to get wired, and let’s get everyone on Wired Journalists.

Have seminars and classes every week:

This again, isn’t that crazy of an idea. These seminars and classes can be led by employees. Many newsroom already host weekly classes where blogging, Twitter, HTML, social networking, video, etc are discussed. 

But if you don’t have qualified employees in some of these areas, bring in outside people. The last thing you need is for your employees to learn the wrong ideas and techniques or get discouraged when their teachers doesn’t really know what they are talking about.

We can’t honestly expect all of our employees to be up-to-date on the latest trends if we don’t even talk about what those trends are and how we can use the newest technology to produce better journalism. Remember, some trends aren’t worth our time. They have to help us produce better journalism and connect better with our readers. 

I’d also have every one of your beat reporters and editors reading BeatBlogging.Org for great ideas on how to incorporate social media.

Work flow says a lot about your organization:

Organizations with modern work flows are often more innovative. Now, maybe you can’t change your whole newsroom work flow overnight, but you can at least change how your team works. Maybe just your team adopts Google Docs to share ideas, but it will still make your team more efficient and allow you to produce better results.

I’d strongly consider project management software like Basecamp. Basecamp combined with Google Docs can help transform a newsroom into a modern, efficient organization. Many Web teams especially don’t have software to help manage projects and work flow.

Basecamp is the kind of modern IT spending that makes sense. Why newsrooms still blow money on Office or even Exchange e-mail makes no sense to me. Microsoft programs are terrible for collaboration, and they’re expensive. 

I think any small news organization would be crazy to spend money on Outlook/Exchange. A bigger organization can spread the cost around to more employees, but a smaller organization has to pay a lot of money for software, servers and people to maintain both.

And Outlook/Exchange that doesn’t really allow employees to be efficient because of its 20th-century mindset. Google Apps and GMAIL is a great solution for many newsrooms (if you’re a small paper like a weekly, you’d be crazy to use anything else).

E-mail is not a project management tool:

How many of your news organizations send out e-mails about mandatory meetings? How many of your organizations also send out reminders about said meetings? Now how many of your organizations how a calendar system like Outlook?

Well, why don’t your news organizations just place these mandatory meetings on your calendar? People need to stop living out of their inboxes. Your inbox is not where you should go to find out what to do each day.

That’s what your calendar is for. Many companies all over the world have created a culture in which e-mail is the main productivity tool. But using e-mail for anything more than it is intended for makes everyone less productive.

There really is no excuse for employees to be CCed and BCCed on every little e-mail. Frankly, it’s embarrassing when many employees get hundreds of e-mails a day. A lot of those e-mails should be IMs or on another, more relevant communication platform.

Outlook/Google Calendar, Google Docs, Wikis, Basecamp, etc will all make your news organization more efficient. We all have less resources today. Let’s put those resources to better use.

What advice would you impart on today’s students?

What would you say to students who are graduating this winter and next spring, during one of the worst economic times in recent memory?

Would you comfort them? Would you tell them to flee? Would you tell them to believe?

Would you be honest about how many newspapers will simply disappear? They can’t evolve. They’ll hold onto their romanticism of the newspaperman as we bury them in newspaper-lined coffins.

And yet all around us, new media organizations sprout like desert roses — glimmers of hope in the darkest of times. They reinvent journalism, while they shed the anachronisms of yesterday’s beliefs. 

Would you point to Spot.Us, TechCrunch and Everyblock as rays of hope? Or has hope forsaken you?

As for me, I don’t know what I would say. I’m both deeply scared and yet forever hopeful for what lies ahead in journalism. I see incredible innovation and vast devastation.

It is with deep regret that I must inform today’s and tomorrow’s journalism students that it is them who must reinvent journalism because their predecessors have failed.

I got my start in newspapers, but I’m beginning to accept that their future isn’t very bright.

I don’t think the same can be said of a lot of my newspaper colleagues. For many of them, the newspaper is what they truly love. 

I’m not married to newspapers. I never was, and I never will be.

But journalism… Well, that’s something I’ll always believe in.

Newspaper ad revenues are again down by double digits, more newspapers are defaulting on debt and we’re entering one of the worst economic crises ever.

Ad revenue will continue to dry up. Many traditional print advertisers (car dealers, real estate agents, etc) are facing tough times and some are going out of business. This economic crisis will claim many people’s jobs and shrink ad budgets around the country.

It will further squeeze already squeezed newspapers. Even CPMs are down. Many newspapers have been slow to embrace video ads, which pay much better. Newspapers also have not been able to discover newer revenue streams.

It’s well known that many older newspaper subscribers do not frequent newspaper Web sites, and this is one major argument against cutting back on the number of days that newspapers publish. Many of these core newspaper readers still read and enjoy newspapers every day. Newspapers don’t want to alienate some of their most loyal readers.

The problem is that newspapers have to move forward into a Web world. Resources are still skewed wildly in favor of print at most newspapers. With little audience overlap between print and online products, newspapers have little synergy and are unable to produce products that compliment each other.

Imagine how much more sense it would make to have The Washington Post, for example, to publish daily online and produce a once-a-week print publication that focuses on analysis, enterprise stories and the big picture. It would be the Yin and the Yang. It would be synergy city.

Many newspapers may never see this reality. Ad revenues will continue to plunge, newspaper managers will continue to cater to print subscribers who are slowly dying off and leaving for richer online experiences and this will be the end for many dailies.

But maybe this could be the event that brings synergy to print and the Web. There is still a future for print — albeit a much different future than daily newspapers are used to. I receive The Economist, National Geographic and the Sunday Washington Post (it would be much stronger if it were the only Post edition each week). A lot of younger people do like print publications, but we don’t like daily publications.

They make little sense. I don’t have time each day, or the will, to read a daily print product. Daily print products also clog up my apartment and are bad for the environment. But giving up on print would be a mistake too.

Could the death of daily newspapers be the catalyst that brings in older readers to Web journalism?

If older readers came onto the Web en masse, newspapers would no longer have to cater to two distinct audiences. Finally, newspapers could produce a print product that made sense in a Web-first world. I fear this reality, however, can only happen if many older readers are forced to start reading online news because many newspapers fail.

And while I will lament and mourn the loss of newspapers around the world, I believe this is a better future. The downfall of newspapers could lead to better journalism. So many news organizations are held back by the past, by bureaucratic inertia, by institutional memory.

Imagine a future in which the only thing holding back news organizations was our imaginations. This economic crisis could not come at a worst time for newspapers, and, frankly, no one really knows how bad it is going to get. I do know, however, know that in good times and bad, people want to be informed.

Maybe, just maybe, this crisis will force us to reinvent journalism. Maybe it will spark an unprecedented wave of innovation as we face the realities of a new world for journalism.

Could it be the turn of the tide?

If you ran into yourself 10 years ago, what would you tell yourself about journalism?

If you could go back 10 years and talk to your news organization’s editorial board and publisher, what would you tell them?

Now take that advice and apply it to today.

It’s only too late if we give up.

At ONA 08 and a week later at Poynter Seminar on ethics, I talked about my online ethics seal idea.

The idea is very simple —  to form a series of ethics seals that Web sites, blogs and news organizations could embed on their Web sites. I want these seals to be in the same vein as the Creative Commons.

Right now there are five seal categories:

1. Sourcing
2. Objectivity/advocacy/opinion journalism or opinion
3. Linking
4. Copy editing/fact checking (does a second person fact check?)
5. Conflicts of Interests

The seals are developed by the community:

• The seals are open source — The community gets to decide which level of the seals means. This also means that people are free to change the language of a seal as long as they open source their new seal.
• That means the seals will evolve — Over time, we can update the ethics seals to reflect the current state of the Web. There will be version 1.0, 2.0, etch of each seal.
• The community is more than just blogs — Any online ethics seal can’t succeed if it hopes to only serve blogs (or “govern” them). Rather a good seal should be applicable to traditional media sources and new media sources. It should be a common ground, because on the Web traditional and new media lines are blurred.
• The seals are just beginning — Right now I have laid out five seal categories. Maybe we need more categories. Maybe we need less. Together, we’ll figure out the core areas to develop seals around.