The Monitor is dead, Long live the Monitor!

The writing had been on the wall for a long time now, way before I came into the picture as Editor-in-Chief. Revenues were low and the increasing costs of paper, printing, and distribution, coupled with a world-wide financial crisis that shows no signs of waning, did absolutely nothing to alleviate those problems. While I can certainly understand your dismay at losing your local paper in print, I find it unfair that many of you have been quick to accuse Transcontinental of not caring. What profit-based, publicly-owned company would allow one of their ventures to keep losing money, year after year, and still keep it on? One can hardly blame them for doing what they did.

Having said that, I'd be a liar if I didn't share how disappointed and sad this decision made me. It sucks, plain and simple.

As a reader, I love sitting down with a paper and a cup of coffee and perusing it at my leisure. I don't even mind the ink smudges on my hands! As an editor, I loved the weekly challenge of putting out a fun, informative and community-minded paper for you. Everyone who knows me knows that I put my heart and soul into it, and while the feedback I received was amazing, and I'm grateful for it, it just wasn't enough to keep this paper afloat.

But all is not lost, my friends! Far from it. The part of me that has been dealing with the weekly frustration of tight editorial space feels like the weight of the world is off my shoulders and the sky's the limit now.

Here's the deal: the rise of the internet has managed to make many weekly papers painfully slow and unresponsive. Today's consumers want news on demand, they want it to be pertinent, timely, constantly updated and they want it now. A small weekly paper with its space limitations can't possibly fulfill that role as adequately as it would want to. There wasn't a week that went by when I didn't feel I let someone down by not being able to place their event or story in the paper. I no longer have that problem.

Jonah Peretti, one of the key players behind the hugely successful Huffington Post website in the U.S. recently stated that "an internet-based news site is alive in a way that is impossible for paper and ink." Who can argue with that?

Some people will choose to focus on the death of The Monitor's print version, and there's no denying it's sad to see an English-language weekly, around since 1926, cease to exist. But, at the end of the day, I see great possibilities for me to focus my attention (and some of the budget that used to be allocated towards printing and distribution) on ensuring you receive quicker, more up-to- date and more in-depth local reporting.

In many ways, no other media is as well suited to the business of news journalism as the internet is. It's up to us what we do with the technology and the internet access that almost everyone has at their disposal right now. Let's face it, even the few who don't have a computer at home have access to a public library and its computers.

So, it's goodbye in print, dear readers, but it's not goodbye at all. I take great pride in being editor of The Monitor and I'll continue to put in the work to ensure that the web-only edition continues to be an even better source of reliable and relevant news for you. Keep those emails coming at toula.foscolos@transcontinental.ca, because at The Monitor it's business as usual.