The Christian Science Monitor — that longtime oasis of thoughtful, issue oriented, balanced journalism — is now actively marketing its new weekly print edition as the next step as it implements a unique newspaper business model that will be watched to see if a longtime media institution can survive in the Internet age.
Last fall it was announced that the Monitor would axe its daily print edition that was distributed via snail-mail and limit itself to THIS online only news website — a favorite read and link-source here at TMV. But the second prong of this two-pronged experiment in survival in the age of the print-debilitating Internet was to launch a weekly print edition.
And today, to my great and pleasant surprise, I opened my mail to find I was offered a “charter membership” in the new publication. Part of the slick, multicolor mailer read: “A BRAND-NEW NEWS WEEKLY THAT’S BEEN 100 YEARS IN THE MAKING!” And part of its invitation read:
The Monitor is written for people who have the confidence to question and a determination to find answers. It is a weekly briefing for those who consider before they judge and for those whose minds are open to argument.
You’ll find that the Monitor looks at the roots and the repercussions. The Monitor seeks the reasons why, for without the reasons it is hard to find resolutions…without understanding the causes it is difficult to accomplish changes.
With the Monitor you will find a weekly that is free from prejudgment and presumption. We know that issues are not black and white….or red and blue…and that sometimes the other side of the voice may have a value of its own. We believe that problems are solvable. And we believe that an informed public, rather than an inflamed one, is the key to doing so.
May I utter the word: “Ditto”?
This is all part of a general business plan that was announced in October, as Marketing Vox reported:
The Christian Science Monitor will no longer publish a daily newspaper.
The paper made the announcement yesterday, giving the news a positive spin by positioning itself as “the first newspaper with a national audience to shift from a daily print format to a daily online publication that operates 24/7,” reports MediaBuyerPlanner.
In April 2009, the Christian Science Monitor will launch a weekly print edition. It will also produce an “enhanced, constantly updated version” of its website, CSMonitor.com, along with a daily electronic subscription product.
The weekly pub will look behind the headlines to help readers understand global issues, according to a release.
Monitor managing publisher Jonathan Wells said the move to a web-first format enables the Monitor to more effectively reach a global audience. Ad revenues from the website and circulation revenue from print and news editions will form the basis of the paper’s business model.
Of course, the Monitor is in a different situation than most papers: it is heavily subsidized by the Church of Christ, Scientist. But it still needs to be viable and so it’s moving towards an Internet/print weekly approach.
The Monitor had to make the move due to a sharp decline in circulation — something I (alas) participated in.
During the 1970s the paper’s circulation was 230,000. That was back in the days when, as a political science student at Colgate University, I was particularly interested in serious comparative politics and international news reporting which was slowly decreasing in American newspapers. My then political science professor Marcus Franda and his wife Vonnie showed me their copy of the Monitor — then a broadsheet — and said it was a serious paper, so meaty that you never had time to read it all. And they were right. (Eventually it became tabloid format and the “newshole” shrunk, but it was still meaty.)
In September 1973, right out of getting my Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, I returned to New Delhi, India, where I had interned on The Hindustan Times daily newspaper as part of my final senior year semester at Colgate. I set myself up there as a fulltime stringer, writing mostly for the old Chicago Daily News.
By May 1975 I was in Madrid, Spain and after the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in the fall of 1975, I became the Monitor’s Special Correspondent — a kind of super stringer (or “full time contributor” as an editor once explained) paid by the piece. I had done a few pieces for the CSM from India and Spain but now it was official…and I worked under one of the best people I met during my journalism career…the great, late Geoffrey Godsell, who was the Monitor’s Overseas News Editor and an excellent reporter/columnist.
Geoffrey made sure I was set up with a cable authority card, but I otherwise filed through the Reuters Madrid office (this was in the days before the Internet, email or cell phones). Godsell also sent me a daily subscription to the paper and he encouraged me to call and chat with him about some of my stories and thoughts about coverage. He often hammered home some news values that if I did not always observe during my entire journalism career I never forgot…and would return to them if I strayed (which I did and do). He fundamentally also changed my political perspective.
Godsell wasn’t into the kind of talk radio political culture demonization and print and broadcast screaming so pervasive in today’s media, political campaigns and seen on many Internet websites. He wasn’t into attacking someone or a publication just because a person or publication shared a different perspective. He was into exactly what the Monitor’s current Managing Publisher Jonathan Wells wrote in the marketing quote above. I could boil down his many bits of advice to these:
1. Where is this story going? What is likely to happen to happen next? Is there a possible solution and what is it?
2. An “on the other hand” never hurt a piece nor did a “critics contend.”
3. If you’re dealing with a complicated issue or a messy story, how would you explain it in a short phone conversation to Mrs. Smith in Peoria? (He would say this so often I almost once blurted: “Maybe Mrs. Smith is dense!”)
4. The paper’s founder Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy stressed that the Monitor was to injure no man but to bless all mankind.
Godsell passed away some years ago — but not a day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about his chats and his encouragement. And when I would visit the U.S., he’d invite me to the CSM office in Boston to meet him; he’d always have a desk there waiting for me to use during my visit.
When he left that job, I then worked under the great David Anable…who continued along the same vein and gave me even more tips about writing stories that just didn’t have content but were written in a compelling enough way so they could compete with staff stories so they could get used (so I could get paid). David was another role model — one for any aspiring journalist. Both Anable and Godsell would always take me into the main office to say hello to the then editor John Hughes — another journalistic giant.
These were people with news values, professionalism, an authentic conscience and out to enlighten, as well as report.
So what happened when I returned to the U.S. and worked on the staff of two papers owned by major corporate newspaper chains?
I met some wonderful and inspiring people there (some are still working on my last paper the ailing San Diego Union-Tribune and I’m still in touch with them).
But the worst person who typified a dismissive attitude towards the stated the concept of aiming for thoughtful journalism came in the form of one editor at my first staff newspaper job, on Knight-Ridder’s Wichita Eagle.
On my first day this editor (who will remain nameless) was introduced to me and was told that I had written for a long time overseas for the Monitor and that I thought highly of its style of reporting.
His eyes narrowed as he looked down his snoot at this young reporter who was meeting him on his first day for the very first time and said:
“The Christian Science Monitor? Some of the worst reporting I’ve read is in the Christian Science Monitor.”
And as time went on working at that newspaper it was clear, as I saw the way he thought and he responded to events, that it was understandable he would see it that way — even though he might have helped the paper’s readers if he had embraced some of that “worst reporting” himself.
Over the years, I’ve subscribed and unsubscribed to the CSM. It offered articles with perspective and the papers would arrive by mail. The advent of the Internet made a mail delivered newspaper even more woefully outdated. USA Today had usurped the Monitor mail-out model, but that paper was also more accessible in street-sale boxes, at airports, given away at key hotels and in convenience stores. I had a huge backlog of issues and by the time I got to them they were outdated and I had already read the daily newspaper and USA Today.
But I became addicted to Monitor’s news website, which I read often and often link to (both the articles and its blog posts). It’s a site with great content. And the newweekly?
It’s an inspired idea — a way to pull it all together. Rather than taking a deep breath, standing back and giving a take each day, some staffers will now stand back, take a deep breath and give a thoughtful weekly take. One question: can this weekly do well in a new news universe where Newsweek has reconstituted itself to offer more Monitor-esque pieces in its news magazine?
But I’m a huge Newsweek fan and a subscriber so tomorrow I’ll send in the card to subscribe to the Monitor’s weekly as well. .
And in the meantime I’ll also offer my own little prayer for the CSM and its supporting church — a prayer that its interesting new business model succeeds so that the CSM’s unique and refreshing reporting thrives and is here for a long time as we move into the old media-unfriendly 21st century.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.