The Christian Science Monitor today announced plans to discontinue its daily print edition in favor of a largely online “multiplatform strategy”.  Plans include production of a daily e-mail version, a continually-updated online edition, and a weekly print edition.  All three editions will be created and maintained by a single staff.

Editor in Chief Mary Trammel stated that “The method of delivery and format are secondary” to the newspaper’s long-standing journalistic mission, that it should “injure no man, but bless all mankind.”

The Monitor is the first nationally-circulated (print) newspaper to make the transition from a daily format to an online publication.

The paper was founded 100 years ago (next month) by Christian Science church founder Mary Baker Eddy. With circulation trending downward for the past four decades, the Monitor has required a subsidy from the church “for most of its history.”

The changes occur at a time of “fundamental transition” in news publishing, as media consumers forsake traditional newspapers and television and radio news in favor of new media offerings

Among the announcements Monday from Internet TV network Revision 3 was the discontinuation of its licensing agreement with the popular video podcast, Wine Library TV. Rev3 had produced a special edition of the show featuring highlights of the daily series called Wine Library Reserve.

I caught up with the creator and host of Wine Library TV, Gary Vaynerchuk, by phone to ask about his perspective on the cutbacks and layoffs at Revision 3.

Vaynerchuk learned of the changes just before they were made public Monday morning. “I’m close with all those guys. I’ve been so busy the last while, we hadn’t talked.  Looking back, I guess I should’ve known something was up, should have had an idea what was up from their phone messages.”

The Revision 3 staff member who edited the daily Wine Library shows into the network’s highlight Reserve series was laid off, along with a reported eight other employees.

Vaynerchuk was surprised by the decision, but not disappointed.

Of the staff and the stars of the cancelled shows at Revision 3, Vaynerchuk couldn’t say enough good things.  “I have an enormous amount of love for these guys.  They are the best of the best.  We’ve been on the phone several times today, looking for new ways to work with them in the future.”

The personalities behind the three Rev 3-produced shows which were cancelled “have a lot of devoted fans in this [Internet/social media] space,” Vaynerchuk said. “Sarah [Lane] and Martin [Sargent] are great. People love them so much, and you’re going to see a lot of blogs and Tweets expressing that for awhile.”

Nevertheless, Vaynerchuk says that the show cancellations and the suspension of licensing agreements with his own Wine Library TV and with Epic Fu are “not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.” He continued, “which was the situation here, it’s not a good decision to keep on spending money there.  They have a core audience of really wired fans, the three shows they cancelled just weren’t being watched.  It’s smart business.”

“It’s hard right now for the people involved, but you should look at this as a tremendous example of people being smart, doing business in a smart way.  These are the kind of decisions that should be made all the time, not just when times are hard.”

Vaynerchuk, known to his devotees as Gary Vee, is characteristically upbeat about how the discontinuation of Wine Library Reserve will affect him and his “personal brand.”

“I’ll come out ahead in the long run.  I have so many good things on the horizon,” Vaynerchuk says. “I’m working on a cruise for next year. The viewership of Wine Library Reserve was good. Our viewership was not huge there, but I’m absolutely sure we gained some new viewers who didn’t know what Wine Library TV was, from this time we worked with Rev 3.

“It’s crazy – my personal brand is changing. It’s not just about wine any more. I’m an expert on wine, but increasingly, I’m an expert on social media, because of all the conferences and lectures I’ve been giving about social media, and I’m developing that side of my personal brand at GaryVaynerchuk.com.”

It has been widely reported that the changes at Rev3 were prompted, at least in part, by the recent economic downturn. I asked Vaynerchuk to share how the current climate events affect him, and his advice for other content creators.

“I’m taking a hard look at everything I’m doing, getting lean, getting in better shape. I’ve cut a thousand SKU’s from Wine Library inventory lately. An economic downturn makes you re-examine what you’re doing, and that’s a good thing. These kind of decisions are practical, and should be made during good times, too.

“People talk about getting lean, training, getting ready, getting into shape, maybe for a fight, a boxing match. You can be training all the time, but right before the fight, you get into really, really good shape. You get really quick, really lean. That’s what people are doing now, getting lean, getting their business, their brand, into shape. And that is not a bad thing. That’s a smart thing to do, regardless of the economy.”

How long is four years?

Well, if you’re a child, being four years old makes you old enough to dress yourself, make your own bed, maybe go to preschool. If you’re a Presidential term, four years brings you back to re-election time, or limps to the end of your lame duck phase, depending. If you’re a thirty-year mortgage, four years gets you barely into the principal-paying part of the loan. If you’re in high school, four years is a very long time, waiting to be treated like a grown-up. If you’re a parent of a high school student, four years is quick, a blink of your eye.

In the podcasting space, however, four years is a very long time.

Today marks pioneering video podcast Rocketboom’s fourth birthday. Rocketboom, a daily video blog, launched October 27, 2004, shortly after the term “podcasting” was coined to describe sequential, episodic, subscribe-able, downloadable (audio or video) content. (That is to say, “RSS with enclosures.”)

Topics have ranged from the serious to the ridiculous. 

Over the past four years, many consumers of media have shifted their attention away from the printed page, radio and television, toward blogs and podcasts available on their computers and mobile devices. There’s a lot of great content available, with more new gems being created all the time. Creation of blogs, podcasts, and even entire social networks becomes easier as inexpensive, powerful tools become available to larger numbers of people.

But over the past four years, thousands of podcast series have debuted and “podfaded.” Scores of podcast networks, hosts, services, and products have launched and struggled or fizzled out between the fall of 2004 and today. 

Happy birthday to a new media old-timer.

Revision 3, the video podcast production network launched by Digg founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, today announced the elimination of three of its original shows. The layoffs are said to include nine staff members. The cancelled shows are Pop Siren, Internet Superstar, and the longer-running Photoshop show Pixel Perfect.

Of the two newer shows, Internet Superstar, and Pop Siren, which were cancelled, Revision 3 said that they were promising prospects that “never really found their audience.”

In addition to the three series cancellations, Revision 3 is also eliminating its licensing and distribution deals with two popular podcasts: Epic Fu, and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV. The announcement said “We remain huge fans of these two shows, even though they don’t fit our long-term plans at Revision3.”

Kent Nichols, co-creator of the popular Ask A Ninja series, says Revision 3 “has some of the best behind the scenes talent in the online space.  They have a great sales team and good leadership and a solid flagship show in DiggNation.” In the face of their decision to make staffing and programming cutbacks, Nichols urges common sense and caution as the “bumpy ride is just beginning:”

“Treat deals and shows you create for these online production companies as temporary rent money solutions, not career building moves.

It’s still better to go the indie route, get attention, sell enough DVDs and Tees to pay your investors back and try to sell your idea to Hollywood for real money under a WGA contract that perserves a ton of rights for you as the creator…

…[P]lease realize that there’s no free lunch.  The deals out there right now are low money (and even at the low money they are offering, they are apparently non-sustaining to companies) and the deals can vaporize overnight.  In that sort of turmoil, it’s hard [to] base a career or life decisions on something that [can] disappear overnight….”

Is this a reflection of poor viability for podcasting or of new media?

Probably not. The cutbacks come at a time when many media companies (new and old) are dramatically reducing staff. Internet startups are being advised by their financial backers to pare staff and expenses to the minimum, so as to make that venture capital last as long as possible.

Gary Vaynerchuk, creator and host of Wine Library TV, one of the shows previously carried by Revision 3 (in a specially-edited “Reserve” edition), said in an interview this evening that the situation “is not a bad thing. If you can’t monetize against content, which was the situation here, it’s not a good decision to keep on spending money there.  It’s smart business. These are the kind of decisions that should be made all the time, not just when times are hard.”

Ludicrous has released a new WordPress plugin, the snappily named MagpieRSS Hotfix for Enclosure Support and Character Encoding Issues, that enhances the WordPress RSS parser, adding support for RSS enclosures.

This free plugin adds support for RSS enclosures to MagpieRSS, the RSS parser behind the fetch_rss() function in WordPress. It also forces MagpieRSS to use UTF-8 character encoding, which fixes some issues with feeds that contain non-ASCII characters.

The developer notes that the plugin is only going to be of use to you if:

• You are fetching feeds on your blog with the fetch_rss() function and want to parse enclosures contained in the feed; or
• You are fetching feeds on your blog either with the RSS Sidebar Widget or with fetch_rss() and question marks are showing up somewhere in the feed where special characters are supposed to be.

If you’re developing a custom podcast solution with WordPress, you may want to check this plugin out.

The popularity of online video services has grown significantly with women and older consumers over the last six months, helping close the age and gender gap within the online video audience in the U.S.

Recent data from Ipsos MediaCT’s MOTION study document the widespread appeal online video now has with the majority of today’s Internet users, and how streaming video in particular has helped build an audience with women and those aged 35 and older. 

This chart show the jump in Internet video usage since December 2007. Note the big jumps in the 25-34 & 35-54 age groups:

Video streaming is no longer simply an online behavior enjoyed exclusively by the stereotypical early adopter segment – young males. Rather, the growth in the online video audience is now being driven by other demographic segments.

Adam Wright, Director at Ipsos MediaCT, explains: “It appears the prevalence of streaming video online among younger males may be approaching a ceiling today, whereas the other demographic groups are driving the audience growth here. The implication for those in the video entertainment industry is that online video – as a medium – appears to be tapping into later stage adopter segments that were perhaps reticent to embrace it even just a year ago.”

“Television networks, movie studios and other video entertainment entities will need to recognize the growing demand among all consumers for digital distribution. Streaming video is no longer something just teens and twenty-something’s are enjoying, but rather it has become a fixture in mainstream America’s daily routines,” adds Wright.

Netflix today announced it has released its 2nd-generation media player, based on Microsoft Silverlight, which brings the company’s Internet video service to subscribers with Intel-based Mac computers for the first time. The deployment, which will initially touch a small percentage of new Netflix subscribers, is the first step in an anticipated roll-out of the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.

Among the viewing enhancements with the new player is timeline navigation, which improves fast-forwarding and rewinding.

For Macintosh users, the Silverlight player will work only on Intel-based Macs, which currently account for roughly three-fourths of Mac units operated by Netflix subscribers.

Live streaming media startup Qik has announced an alpha client for the BlackBerry Pearl 8120, BlackBerry Pearl 8130, BlackBerry Bold, BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Pearl Flip 8220.

Qik on BlackBerry lets you stream live to the Internet from supported Blackberry devices. 

Here’s Qik’s demo video:

Here are details on the Qik Blackberry alpha release:

Griffin has released a free iPhone application, iTalk Recorder (App Store Link), that lets you record audio with your phone.

iTalk’s simple user interface lets you start/stop, choose Good/Better/Best sample rates and manage your recordings, all with one finger. You can use iTalk to record on your iPhone or 2nd generation iPod touch.

They also are offering iTalk Sync (App Store Link), which you can run on your Mac or PC to transfer recordings from your iPhone to your computer via Wi-Fi.

Features:

• High-quality handheld recording using your iPhone or iPod touch
• Easy, convenient user interface and controls
• Drag & drop wireless file transfers to your computer
• User-selectable 11.025 kHz, 22.05 kHz, or 44.10 kHz sample rates
• Free!

It looks like the hunt for Bin Laden is moving to Twitter.

A draft US Army intelligence report (pdf) looks at ways Twitter, social media and other new technologies could be used by terrorists. The posting of the report on the FAS site was reported Friday by Wired magazine contributing editor Noah Shachtman on his national security blog Danger Room.

The report bases its concerns on the fact that Twitter has “become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audiences.”

“Twitter is already used by some members to post and/or support extremist ideologies and perspectives,” the report notes. “Extremist and terrorist use of Twitter could evolve over time to reflect tactics that are already evolving in use by hacktivists and activists for surveillance.”

While it may frighten some to think that Bin Laden could be on Twitter – it’s just as scary that the Army lumps human rights groups, vegetarians, religious communities, atheists and political enthusiasts together with communists and anarchists in order to build a case for monitoring Twitter.