A year after going to a Web-only format, the Christian Science Monitor is reporting increased Web traffic, unique users, page views and revenue for its weekly edition and daily E-newsletter.

But, like most other outlets, online ad revenue is not as high as expected, prompting a buyout and a slight reduction in staff, including the shutdown of two news bureaus.

“This was a pretty major change that we went through,” says Editor John Yemma. “We made it through the transition, we are on budget and we are growing.”

The change occurred March 25, 2009, when the newspaper stopped its daily print edition and went to a free Web-only format. It later added a weekly print edition on April 12, Yemma recalls. It also sends out a daily e-mail newsletter for $84 per year.

A year after the change, Yemma said monthly unique users are up 64% to 5.3 million, with monthly page views up 87% to 14.5 million, as of March 2010.

He also said the circulation for the paid weekly print edition is up from 43,000 at its launch to 77,000 today.

“That is a 79% growth and we are getting great reader reaction to it,” Yemma said. He said overall revenue for the Monitor since the switch to Web-only has been higher than expected, $4.3 million.

But one drawback, the online ad revenue has been lower than expected, Yemma admitted. The Web ad revenue had been expected to come in at about $870,000 for the past 12 months, but is only at $490,000.

That, in part, led to a buyout offer put forth to the paper's 85 editorial employees in February, which four people took. Among those were the paper's Jerusalem bureau reporter and its person in San Francisco. Neither will be replaced, Yemma said.

That will leave the paper with Middle East reporters in Baghdad and Istanbul. “We are pretty well covered in the Middle East,” he added. “We are using the opportunity of people leaving to reassess our situation.”

Meanwhile, the paper continues to be subsidized with some $20 million annually from The First Church of Christ, Scientist, a situation editors are trying to slowly end within the next four years. The switch to Web-only was the beginning of that change.

“We want to keep controlling costs,” Yemma added.