John Yemma: Lessons from Encarta for newspapers

“general knowledge, whether under the brand name of a giant like Britannica or Microsoft, can’t withstand an effort that was developed specifically for the Internet and that harnesses gifted amateurs,” writes John Yemma, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, one week into web-only production.

Full story at this link…

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CSM and CMS: Christian Science Monitor readies technology for web-only move

Following its decision to become an online-only outfit from spring next year, the Christian Science Monitor has opted for an open source content management system (CMS) produced by Norway’s eZ Systems.

The eZ Publish CMS will support multimedia content and allow the monitor to publish to multiple platforms if needed, a release from eZ said.

The deal marks the CMS provider’s plans to expand into the US.

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End print edition of New York Times, argues Netscape co-founder

In Marc Andreessen’s world the Christian Science Monitor wouldn’t be the only traditional print product going online-only.

In this interview in the latest edition of Portfolio, Andreessen, who is co-founder of Ning, Netscape and investor in Digg and Twitter, says the New York Times should cut its print losses and focus on ‘the market of the future’.

If you were running the New York Times, what would you do?
[Andreessen] Shut off the print edition right now. You’ve got to play offence. You’ve got to do what Intel did in ‘85 when it was getting killed by the Japanese in memory chips, which was its dominant business. And it famously killed the business – shut it off and focused on its much smaller business, microprocessors, because that was going to be the market of the future. And the minute Intel got out of playing defence and into playing offence, its future was secure. The newspaper companies have to do exactly the same thing.

The financial markets have discounted forward to the terminal conclusion for newspapers, which is basically bankruptcy. So at this point, if you’re one of these major newspapers and you shut off the printing press, your stock price would probably go up, despite the fact that you would lose 90 per cent of your revenue. Then you play offence. And guess what? You’re an internet company.

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AP: First US national newspaper goes web only

The Christian Science Monitor is to become the first national US paper to drop its daily print edition and focus on publishing online, as a result of the financial pressure on the industry.

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