extemp world rocked: Christian Science Monitor to go online-only

Extempers have relied on the Christian Science Monitor for years. No other citation carries so much weight with such panache. The CSM, though, apparently lacks readers outside the forensics community, and is dropping its print circulation to focus on its digital reach.

Come April, the Boston-based general-interest paper — founded in 1908 and the winner of seven Pulitzer Prizes — will print only a weekend edition after struggling financially for decades, its editor announced today.

The Monitor's circulation has fallen from a peak of 230,000 in 1970 to about 50,000 now, while its online traffic has soared. The newspaper gets about 5 million page-views a month, compared with about 4 million five years ago and 1 million a decade ago.

The Monitor was one of the first newspapers in the country to put content online, beginning in 1995, when correspondent David Rohde was taken prisoner in Bosnia.

"Obviously, this is going to help with our costs, but it also enables us to put much more emphasis on the Web and basically put our reporting assets and our editorial assets where we think growth will be in a very tough industry in the future, which we think is the Web," said Editor John Yemma, who was The Boston Globe's multimedia editor before he moved to the Monitor in June.

Well, National Forensic League, when're we going to drop the facade altogether, and allow Google in the prep room?