The Christian Science Monitor, a highly respected national newspaper, is throwing in the towel on paper.

The Monitor has announced that it is giving up its daily newsprint and ink distribution -- and instead will be a web-only publication. It will run the presses only for its weekend edition. Poynter Online explains:

The Monitor, celebrating its 100th birthday this month and next, is the most prominent newspaper to date to take the online plunge. But, like some of the others that have quit daily print publication this year, it has special circumstances that would not apply to the typical metro daily. In the Monitor's case, those circumstance include a modest circulation -- about 50,000 -- combined with national distribution. Also, it is owned by the Church of Christ, Scientist, which has been willing to underwrite operating shortfalls though the years but not the big losses that come in the current deteriorating print climate.

Whatever the specific circumstances, this is clearly the wave of the future. And, to my mind, it has been a long time coming.

Just think of it this way: If you were to devise a way to get news to the public today, would you ever think of printing newspapers -- which take literally tons of newsprint and ink to put together -- and then deliver them every morning with a very expensive combination of vehicles and manpower ranging from planes and trucks to kids on bicycles?

Of course not. Newsprint and ink is a hopelessly outdated model. For up-to-the-minute news, the answer clearly is online distribution in some form. The Monitor is paving the way.