John Yemma, Editor of The Christian Science Monitor, thinks so.
There is no future in a paywall. No salvation in digital razzle dazzle.
There is, however, a bold future in relevant content.
Universal Adam highlights the CSM’s success with online-centric publishing. Back to John for an explanation of what that means.
A year ago, we ceased publishing the daily, 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor newspaper and launched a weekly magazine to complement our website, on which we doubled down by reorienting our newsroom to be web-first. Our web traffic climbed from 6 million page views last April to 13 million in February. Our print circulation rose from 43,000 to 77,000 in the same period.
No-one is claiming that CSM has solved the problems facing the media. John remarks that the newsroom is still “evolving.” What works for the CSM may not work elsewhere: CSM has the support of the church, whereas other publications have the support of, say, Rupert Murdoch.
But CSM has taken a bold step (as bold as Intel’s when it got out of memory chips to concentrate on processors?), and the limited and early indications we can see are positive. I recommend reading John Yemma’s piece in full.
I agree “Relevant Content” is the definite direction of Google. If you think about it, who wants old news? So fresh content is the global commodity of most reputable search engines. Now we have “TWEETS” that may have replaced long-winded content. Another blow to the journalistic world of grammatical correctness. There are so many changes being made online in 2010. This is definitely the year of mass global change. One thing for sure is the online world is about to speed up in how content and communication is made and the GIANTS will program the when, how, who, where and when.