GIS Monitor was launched in 2000 by Tenlinks, Inc. Adena Schutzberg [bio], then as now, served as editor and Roopinder Tara served as publisher. The weekly GIS newsletter covered stories and points of view not covered in the existing trade or scholarly press. Delivered electronically each Thursday [subscribe], the free publication was shamelessly built on the model of UpFronte.eZine, a CAD publication edited by Ralph Grabowski. Word of mouth drove GIS Monitor readership from about 100 for the first issue to several thousand by March 2002 when the publication was purchased by GITC America.

Later in 2002, GIS Monitor moved to HTML to better serve its advertisers. While GIS Monitor is advertiser supported, there is great care given to choosing topics of interest to readers and to acting as an outspoken supporter of GIS users. GIS Monitor is perhaps as choosy about the content it includes as that which it excludes.

GIS Monitor has become the publication that breaks the rules, steppng forward to cover controversial or potentially sensitive stories. GIS Monitor was first to report that the U.S. Department of Interior was developing two portals for its Geospatial One-Stop project. It was first to review those portals, even before their official launches. GIS Monitor was the only GIS publication to detail Secret Service control of USGS imagery of Washington DC. GIS Monitor warned of the legal issues involving the use of online services such as automated flood zone locations. GIS Monitor is also known to ask the "hard questions" about technology, marketing and the future. The editor regularly removes marketing spin and verbiage to get down to the facts.

GIS Monitor is known to cover conferences in depth and with feeling. Readers regularly comment on those issues, "I felt like I was there."

GIS Monitor is part of the curriculum at several university GIS programs and required reading at many of the top GIS software developers and consultants. Material is regularly reprinted, with permission, in specialty newsletters. The editor is regularly asked to speak on GIS topics and participate in panel discussions.

GIS Monitor's favorite praise to date, from a longtime reader: "It is the best journalism in our field since Denny and Nora were active with GIS World and Business Geographics." [The editor was one of the first subscribers to GIS World in 1990.]