• Boston Herald, Friday, April 28, 2006 10:45 AM

Faced with the plain, ugly facts--freefalling circulation and consequent losses in advertising--the nearly 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor recently began a radical transition from print to online circulation. The highly regarded paper still publishes a print edition daily from its Boston headquarters, but it's been in the vanguard when it comes to understanding how to use the Web, according to the Boston Herald. "The overall newsroom atmosphere has switched from, 'Oh my gosh, what does this mean for our future?' to 'What can we do, how can we do it?'" Karla Vallance, the Monitor's online managing editor, tells the Herald. The movement to a more Web-centric model was accelerated this year when a Monitor reporter, Jill Carroll, was held captive in Iraq for 82 days, thus casting worldwide attention on the paper. During the period of Carroll's captivity, the paper's site turned into a virtual community of concerned citizens. "That was a really important example of what the Web can do, where the readers can create the content," Vallance says. "We want to do more of that." Fortunately for the Monitor, while circulation for the print edition has been dropping, its online site, csmonitor.com, has been experiencing an ever-increasing number of visits.

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