Going Treeless

You might have missed it among all the exciting election news of the campaign’s last few weeks — the Christian Science Monitor has decided to stop its print edition in April, becoming the first major newspaper in the U.S. to convert from print and online editions to online only. They’re even advertising a “treeless” subscription option to get readers used to the idea.

I still love the feel of a newspaper, and one of my favorite things to do on Sunday is to work through a Statesman or a New York Times section-by-section. But the reality is that I’m much more prone to read an article online these days than in the print edition. When a client does appear in a print edition, I’m thinking about some quality time with my scanner, whereas an online appearance by a client typically comes to me via Google Alert. The Monitor’s more a trendsetter than an anomaly, here, I’d think — it feels like we’re moving away from paper. Not immediately, of course, but it’s coming.