82 year old local paper goes online-only

Posted by Bhamini .N on February 4, 2009 at 4:51 PM

Founded in 1926, The Monitor, a Montreal West-end community paper is shutting its print edition and going online-only. With the last edition to appear on February 5th, the paper, even with a weekly circulation of about 35,000, was reported to be non-profitable for about six years.

Owned by Transcontinental, the paper served most of Montreal's English-speaking community. With the company trying to find three laid-off staffers jobs in other departments in the company, four other contributors will continue to write for the website, www.themonitor.com.

Other newspapers have adopted this model recently, namely the Christian Science Monitor and three dailies in the US. Many print publications are being forced to rethink their media structure and adapt online-only strategies owing to increasing financial pressure and competition from the internet.

Sources: pubzone.com