Another newspaper prints the last edition

Agence France-Presse

The Boston-based Monitor announced plans in October to eliminate its daily print edition and become the first national U.S. newspaper to adopt a Web-based strategy.

Like other U.S. dailies, the Monitor had been losing readership and print advertising revenue to online media for years and circulation was hovering around 50,000 by the time the decision was made to shut down the presses.

Editor John Yemma said the award-winning newspaper will still print a weekly edition for subscribers and a printable three-page daily news digest by email but the main focus will be on its Web site, CSMonitor.com.

He said visitors to the Web site, which currently attracts more than two million unique visitors a month, should not expect an immediate and dramatic change overnight but a steady improvement over time.

"It's not like we have new flash graphics or anything going up," Yemma said. "I'm sure we'll have to struggle to find our feet in the first couple of days.

"But after that you'll see the Web site will start to probably look different because it will be manned more hours of the day with fresh content," he said. "Our desire, of course, is to ultimately be 'round the clock. By freeing our journalists from print we should be able to devote more of their time and attention to Web content."

He said the Monitor had cut its editorial staff from 97 employees at the end of last year to around 80 but was maintaining eight foreign bureaus, a network of stringers and six domestic U.S. bureaus outside of Boston and Washington.