In October 2008, citing losses of $18.9 million per year versus $12.5 million in annual revenue, the Monitor announced that it would cease printing daily and instead print weekly editions starting in April 2009.
CSM editor John Yemma tries to convince himself that the organization can become economically sustainable.
He claims that a pure online CSM would cost 6 to 7 Million dollars a year to operate. With their weekly print product, approximately $12 Million. He hopes to generate revenue to cover those costs through a mix of reader subscriptions, money generated from a 30 year old CSM endowment that outputs about $7 million a year. A syndication service which generates approximately $600,000, and donations from church coffers which equal about $5 million a year. He doesn’t give an advertising revenue number because the number is so low.
The answer he gives to the question, “why would I pay $89 for something that’s free online” doesn’t inspire confidence. He says, “Its a nice product. it’s a nice weekend read. It has a smaller carbon footprint.” what!?
And from the New York Times “The site now gets about three million page views a month, according to comScore, and Mr. Yemma said he wanted to increase that to 20 million to 30 million a month in the next five years. Even if he can fill the site only with remnant, cheap ads, he said, if visits grow as he is projecting, ‘that’s a sustainable model.’” According to Quantcast the site gets more like 2million page views per month so again, how is CSM expecting to grow online readership 10 to 15x in the next 5 years? And what does he consider a “cheap” ad? CPC display Ad rates are falling fast.
Although I commend his utilization of multiple revenue streams, This is NOT an economically sustainable model. He hopes his model will break even in 5 years. He hopes (based on what?) that readership grows from currently 50k to 90k readers at which point they should break even. How is he going to grow readership when it has been declining from a high of 220,000 in 1970? All I’m hearing is, “use church money and endowment injections and hope at some point that additional revenue shows up”.
UPDATE:
In the follow up interview we make nice and share our ideas Round 2
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Dear Robert:
Gee, what a shallow and dismissive blog post. But that’s what you get when you don’t actually do the interview yourself but simply derive it from someone else’s interview and then harrumph that you aren’t getting proper explanation for your puzzlements. I’d be happy to answer your questions, but you have to ask them and not just simply watch someone else’s interview and utter “what!?” or make up quotes like the one at the end of your post about hoping “at some point that additional revenue shows up.”
So how about being a real journalist and getting in contact? Yes, it’s harder work. You have to engage with another human. But you actually get real answers to real questions. And it’s more in the spirit of the high-minded Warren Buffett quote you chose as the motto for you site.
John
Jesus Christ (oh, no pun intended) John. Chillax! I love your snarky response, but you spent 2 paragraphs bitching about how Robert made his blog post and didn’t actually answer or address any of the quotes you had a problem with. If you disagree with something defend yourself, don’t just bitch about it. For entertainment purposes it’s more fun if you actually bitch and defend yourself, but just bitching about something, careful or you just end up sounding like me.
Oliver Andrew Wells
As a long-time reader and admirer of CSM I would offer two suggestions for profitability: Lower the weekly price to undercut the news magazines (say $29/year) to quickly boost subscriptions. Forget the wall calendars and other premium gimmicks. And mail the new weekly as regular Periodical class inside USA only. The non-profit Periodical rate limits advertising that can be sold in any issue to small percentages, like 10 percent of space, far too small for an educated & affluent audience like Monitor.
Hey Robert and Oliver: I’m happy to talk directly. But really you guys should figure out how to ask questions rather than just posturing. It would be so much more productive. It is what journalists do. So why not try it? I’m reachable. You see my email address. Contact me and have a real human conversation rather than just an attitude session.
By the way, I know it is a terrific boon to a blogger to have a real live person actually respond to a blog and post a comment (it’s not like you are swimming in comments). It gave you fodder for another post. Bravo. You’re welcome.
My point is that I’d be happy to talk to you.
John
His response is extremely telling. He attacks you on from a perspective suggesting that the problem with blogs is that all these people think they’re writers, but they don’t do any journalism and they don’t know how. So it’s the old guard’s attack on the new. And it’s right, to an extent, but only if you see blogging as an extension of journalism.
But the fact of the matter is this: he’s looking at blogs and expecting them to change, saying that they’re full of problems instead of looking at the problems of the newspaper.
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In the follow up interview we make nice and share our ideas Round 2