1. Stopping the presses:
Lessons from the
Monitor
Dr. Jonathan Groves, Drury University
Dr. Carrie Brown-Smith, University of Memphis

2. History
 Founded in 1908
 Funded largely by the
Christian Science
church
 Daily newspaper,
distributed via mail
 Switched to Web-only
daily, print weekly
March 2009
John Yemma
Editor

3. Declining influence
Circulation
220,000 in 1970
↓↓
52,000 2008

4. Culture
 Mission: “To injure no man, but to bless all mankind.”
 Deep commitment to “Monitor journalism”
 “Solutions-based” journalism
Key underlying assumption:
Web-first is undermining the craft of journalism
and is fundamentally in conflict with Monitor journalism

5. Timeline
December 2009:
Decision
July 2010:
Implementation
January 2011:
Confirmation
9.5 M page
views
25 M page-view
milestone
19.4 M page
views/ 8.8 M
uniques
*

6. Fundamental conflict:
The success of page
views
vs.
The Monitor ideal

7. Four-pronged strategy
 Increase the frequency of updating
 Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
 Monitoring Google Trends for hot topics
 Use social media to reach new audiences

8. Update frequency
 Have reporters write two shorter stories (500 words)
 Use blogs to get information out more quickly
 One edit instead of two
 Use lists to summarize and synthesize

9. Riding the Google wave
 Don’t just use keywords; use keyword phrases
 Google Trends
 Use Google News and Yahoo! News to identify topic
 Repeat phrases in headline and blurb
Once the Monitor owns a topic,
ride the Google wave

10. Repeated phrase

11. Incorporate social media
 Use blogs to create a network of interested
constituencies
 Have reporters use Facebook, Twitter accounts
 Create a Digg team to build communities
 Expand brand presence on all social media

12. Page views
Source: Quantcast.com

13. Conclusions
 Eliminating print daily made changing routines
possible
 After almost two years, still conflicted
 Success breeds hesitant acceptance
 Threat/reality ignites change