A century-young news mission

Warren Bolon | from The Christian Science Journal

Spiritual sense helps reporters and editors of The Christian Science Monitor fulfill the newspaper’s goal “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.”

What originally drew you to work for the Monitor?

David Clark Scott: Growing up, the Monitor had been around the house. But I took it for granted. It wasn’t until I went to college and started to study journalism that I learned it was considered one of the finest newspapers in the US and the world.

Cheryl Sullivan: I came to the Monitor about a year after graduating from college, having obtained my educational training in journalism and some early professional experience at local papers. It wasn’t long before I realized that reporting about fires and car accidents and other local issues wasn’t going to be satisfying for me. I’d grown up with the Monitor in the household, and I aspired to have a part in covering the important issues of the day—in the contextual and complete way that the Monitor did. Its coverage struck me then as a higher order of journalism, although at the time I would not have been very articulate about why I perceived that. I was also deepening my study of Christian Science, and a Monitor career seemed a perfect marriage of head and heart.

I loved the conviction I gained through reading the Monitor that the world, despite its woes, was lovable.

Gail Russell Chaddock: I, too, grew up reading the Monitor, and it—more than colleges or universities—was the basis of my education. It taught me that my work wasn’t just local, no matter what my job description. I loved the conviction I gained through reading the Monitor that the world, despite its woes, was lovable. As I grew up near Boston, I had a chance to see Monitor writers and editors at work. Former Monitor editor Erwin Canham seemed to move mountains to teach our Sunday School class each week. Home Forum writer Neil Millar, who had a glorious sense of humor, loved helping young writers dare to make a start of it. Former editor Kay Fanning gave me an unexpected chance to work at the Monitor. She said it was never too late to learn or to bring what I could offer to Mary Baker Eddy’s newspaper.

I also learned, over time, that the Monitor was greater than the sum of the people who work for it, however talented. It’s also its readers and the church members who daily support its activity. But its greatest strength is the spiritual power of its mission statement, “to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent” and “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind” [The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 353]. At a time when I was in great need, a Christian Science practitioner reminded me that I wasn’t in this work on my own—that a whole movement was supporting the work of the Monitor as a part of the mission of Church. I, too, could claim the blessing of supporting this spiritual idea and “operate unspent.” Over my years at the Monitor, I also discovered another point in the economy of time that didn’t at first seem obvious. I once thought that I didn’t have time for church work because the Monitor took all the hours I had and then some. Besides, I had done lots of branch church work before coming to the Monitor, so I figured it all evened out. But events on many fronts helped me to see how important every aspect of Church was to my health, happiness, and salvation. I joined the local branch church and soon got involved in many activities that brightened every aspect of my life, including productivity at the Monitor.

Josh Burek: I was initially drawn to the Monitor because I loved reading it. During my college days, I would hunker down in a corner booth during lunch and devour the Monitor along with my meal. What sealed the deal, I think, was the “Monitor Night Live” forum that took place at Principia College my senior year. Several correspondents—including Gail Russell Chaddock—took time before the forum to meet with student journalists over dinner. I was so impressed with their quality of thought. I remember thinking afterward that the Monitor would be a great place to work.

What keeps the fires of Monitor journalism burning for you today?

A news story that conveys clarity and insight and calm is an achievement I celebrate.

CS: A desire to see the Godlike qualities of clarity and intelligence expressed, even at times when they seem to be absent from human affairs. That may seem like a simple thing and perhaps not very ambitious, but a news story that conveys clarity and insight and calm—especially in the frenzied moments of a breaking news event—is an achievement I celebrate. In addition, I am motivated by a desire to do what I can to help the rising generation of Monitor reporters and editors grasp what it is that makes this newspaper unique and to help them enrich their own sense of its mission.

DCS: When I started at the Monitor as an on-call copy kid shortly after graduating from college, I was amazed that someone would pay me for practicing what I loved: Christian Science and writing. Most days I’m still amazed, and grateful.

JB: Every day begins with a blank page. Filling it with content that furthers the Monitor’s mission is a daily challenge and reward. Plus, being in the newsroom is like being a student in reverse: Here, I get paid to learn! People all over the globe—from top diplomats to students to homemakers—read and respond to what we publish. Some of our best insights come from everyday readers who share with us their thinking or experience. All of us, I think, need to be Monitor reporters. Reporting not only observes and describes reality, but also shapes it. It’s active, not passive. And each of us, whether we realize it or not, is reporting constantly. We put headlines on our daily experience all the time: “I’m tired.” “She’s stressed.” “The conflict at my son’s school is intensifying.” What’s the source of the story we’re reporting, that we’re telling ourselves? Is it trustworthy? The Monitor isn’t just a group of people in a newsroom. It’s a commitment by a community to a way of interacting with the world.

As a writer herself, Mary Baker Eddy said a lot about the art and science of communication—about prayer as communication, of course, but also about the spiritual resources and “faculties of Mind” that God imparts. What are some of the ways you’ve drawn on these resources?

I learned to trust the spiritual unfoldment of a day’s work, including my capacity to do it.

GRC: I was never a natural writer or especially quick. As an academic, I was used to poring over a subject and letting ideas slowly bubble to the surface. A daily news cycle required a new way of working—and gave new meaning to the Biblical promise: “Behold, now is the accepted time” [II Cor. 6:2]. I learned to trust the spiritual unfoldment of a day’s work, including my capacity to do it.

One of the passages I use most in my work is the account of Jacob’s ladder—set up on the earth but reaching to heaven, “the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” When Jacob woke up from that dream he said: “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not” [Gen. 28:12, 16]. When a deadline is upon me and the story isn’t ready, I think about that ladder touching earth (right where the need is) and reaching heaven. The issue isn’t time in healing any more than in writing a news story—it’s spiritual unfoldment. Countless times, I’ve had calls at the very last minute or walked outside and run into someone I’ve tried to contact for days—that have given me missing elements of a story. I also think often of something Mrs. Eddy wrote: “Mortals who on the shores of time learn Christian Science, and live what they learn, take rapid transit to heaven,—the hinge on which have turned all revolutions, natural, civil, or religious, the former being servant to the latter,—from flux to permanence, from foul to pure, from torpid to serene, from extremes to intermediate” [Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, pp. 205–206].

CS: There are days in the news business when events are swirling fast. Get enough of them, and it can feel like a maelstrom. At those moments, I’ve found it helpful to pause just for an instant to affirm the presence of the divine Mind and to declare that I, therefore, have presence of Mind. Of course, I rely on years of experience to help me decide which stories to offer for Page One display or the particular angle we will want to take on a story. But that’s not always enough. Some days are so wild that I’m tempted to flee, as Elijah did, to a cave. Elijah was led to stand in the face of wild material conditions and to hear the “still small voice” of God’s directing [I Kings 19:12]. I’m no Elijah. But Mrs. Eddy writes that “The ‘still, small voice’ of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe’s remotest bound” [Science and Health, p. 559]. Sure enough, it reaches into the Monitor newsroom to bring the right idea about what to do and how to do it.

DCS: Mind is infinitely and instantly creative. We see that demonstrated every day. Often, a poorly written headline needs to be changed and there’s less than two minutes before deadline. In those situations, we expect immediate results. The prayer is often simply an affirmation that Mind, not minds, is at work. And we will see that expressed! On days when I’m tempted to believe that I’m personally responsible for producing a quick headline or finding another story to replace one that hasn’t come in as expected, I have a note on my desk to remind me of the true source of inspiration, and clear decision-making: “We have a building of God, an house not made with hands” [II Cor. 5:1]. The Monitor is a newspaper not made with human hands. That helps me get my limited mortal sense of self, with limited time and resources, out of the way, and let Him do His magnificent thing.

It’s in the expression of creative energy to “look deep into realism” and ask the right questions.

JB: Given the pressures of today’s nonstop news cycle, it’s tempting to want to work faster, to multitask more intensely. But often, I find myself working hard to slow down. To be quiet, listen, carve out time to think. That’s critical, because I feel that 90 percent of the value of Monitor journalism comes before a single word is written or edited. It’s in the expression of creative energy to “look deep into realism” [Science and Health, p. 129] and ask the right questions. To see beyond the conflict and the human fears and find a line of inquiry or insight that truly advances the story. For example, we ran an opinion piece about the “Jena 6,” the controversial case about justice for six black teens in Jena, Louisiana. There was a lot of heated commentary about it, and we were hearing conflicting reports about what really happened. At one point, a reader contacted me to suggest we had misrepresented some details. So I investigated more deeply, and I found a totally different perspective on the issue. I pursued the matter by asking a local news reporter to debunk common myths about the story and set the record straight. That piece made a big difference in how people perceived this story.

Among the challenges you’ve faced on deadline, is there one that stands out because it compelled you to go deeper spiritually than you had before?

CS: I remember a time when we were racing on deadline, on a breaking news story, to prepare an article for the next day’s paper. We had only a few hours to do the reporting, writing, and editing, but we’d settled on an approach that seemed particularly helpful to the situation, particularly Monitor-esque. However, with little time left, the reporter called to say that he’d not had any sources call back and that the data he needed were difficult to come by. My first thought was that we needed to pull the plug—find another story to put in the paper. My second thought was along the lines of, “Wait a minute. This approach to the story is a right idea, and nothing can interfere with the full development and fruition of a right idea.” I decided instead to support the idea of this story through prayer. I mentally insisted that the flow of right ideas from God to man cannot be blocked, impeded, thwarted, or distorted. I reviewed our motive for attempting to deliver this particular story for our readers and found it to be pure—not based on competitiveness or human will. I remembered a line from Science and Health: “Working and praying with true motives, your Father will open the way” [Science and Health, p. 326]; and I affirmed that a way would be found to have what we needed when we needed it. Within 15 minutes, the reporter called back to say that the information was flowing in and that he had begun to write the top of the story. I don’t even remember now what the particular story was. What I remember is the spiritual lesson I learned: Defend the right of Mrs. Eddy’s paper to publish the inspired thought of its staff, especially in the face of the claim that it can’t be done.

DCS: Jill Carroll’s kidnapping in 2006 challenged many of us to dig deeper. No one at the paper had dealt with such a situation before. One of the initial fears was over who had abducted her. Was it a criminal gang? If so, how long would they hold her? If they found out that she was an American journalist, they might sell her to Al Qaeda, and Al Qaeda had killed hostages. It was hard to lift myself out of this spiral of fear. A passage from Acts helped to allay some of my fear: “Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent” [Acts 13:26]. Whoever held her were children of Abraham—he’s considered the father of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. It helped me stop worrying about whether she was being held by Sunni insurgents or not. That didn’t matter. She and they were all children of the one God, all brothers and sisters, and would treat each other accordingly. That statement has also helped me reframe how I now look at the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

I had what I needed at that time, in that place, to fulfill the Monitor’s mission.

GRC: I had been sent on assignment to Oxford, Mississippi, to write a profile of a leader on racial reconciliation. At the last minute, the interview fell through, and it looked as if the trip had been pointless. A Monitor photographer had come with me on this trip, and it looked as if his time would be wasted, too. But standing in the middle of the square, I thought of the prophet Elisha’s question to another woman short of resources. He asked, “What hast thou in the house?” (II Kings 4: 2). To me that meant that I had what I needed at that time, in that place, to fulfill the Monitor’s mission. Together, the photographer and I pulled together a story on racial reconciliation based on interviews with people in the town, including some who came up to us and volunteered insights on the issue even before being asked. The day also produced memorable photographs.

Former editor Kay Fanning said that the Monitor aimed to bring light rather than heat to its coverage of events in the world. Are there ways in your current assignment that you’ve seen this motive in action?

JB: Most op-eds that generate heat are backward-looking; they typically react to a political leader’s recent decision. That’s why the Monitor often tries to reverse the very direction of commentary—by looking ahead, by looking constructively, and by looking away from leaders to what everyday people can do to improve the world. A recent example of this is the five-part series on poverty we published. Instead of just detailing what’s gone wrong or dwelling on the fierce debate between opposing camps in the development field, this series corrected common misconceptions and generated powerful ideas for the effort to lift up the world’s one billion people living in extreme poverty.

DCS: You’re right, Warren, and former editor Richard Bergenheim used a similar analogy in an op-ed piece, “A light for the world,” that was published when he took the helm in 2005. He wrote, “Those who are personally striving against oppression and being persecuted because of this, deserve evidence that their work is recognized and supported. When much in the media shows men and women at their worst, something is needed to honor the decency and courage and selflessness that surround us. It’s important to shine a light on the work of those who are dedicated to delivering people from disaster, famine, or extermination.” That passage was the genesis for what Monitor editors and writers later dubbed the PMAD—a daily story about “people making a difference.” Richard, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, once said that the PMAD in the Monitor was like the patient who called the practitioner just to say that he’d been healed. “The practitioner knows his prayers are effective, but imagine what his day would be like if all he ever got were phone calls about problems,” he said.

Most news journalists probably don’t spend much time thinking about their organization’s founder—or its mission statement for that matter. For you, how do those factors—Mary Baker Eddy’s launch of a newspaper a century ago, and the objectives she gave it—shape the character of the Monitor today and the decisions you make about the daily product?

For Christian Scientists, the Monitor is a highly effective way to meet your neighbor and to help him through prayer.

DCS: The Monitor’s purpose, “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” is a mandate to “love thy neighbour as thyself” [Matt. 19:19]. Remember the parable of the good Samaritan? If you’re turning away from your neighbor in need (turning away from the news), that’s a lot like the behavior of the priest and the Levite [see Luke 10:30–35]. I suspect Mrs. Eddy saw the Monitor as a way for healers to connect with the world beyond their immediate family or even community. For Christian Scientists, the Monitor is a highly effective way—in a busy world—to meet your neighbor and to help him through prayer.

Of course, there are many who read the Monitor who are not Christian Scientists but who care deeply about their global neighbors and want to see coverage of their lives that isn’t primarily focused on famine, war, and disease. There are many good newspapers today, but how many are doing constructive journalism? The Monitor remains the only newspaper with that mandate “to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent.” One of the ways we’ve unpacked that directive is by using this statement from Science and Health: “The term Science, properly understood, refers only to the laws of God and to His government …” [Science and Health, p. 128]. Then the laws of good (or justice or integrity or joy or infinite intelligence) operate unspent. Most other news organizations report the problem—the bombing, the tragedy, the disaster. The Monitor attempts to address the root causes—“… the leading error or governing fear …” [Science and Health, p. 377]—and talk to those who are working on solutions. For editors and reporters, the hardest part can be going the extra mile to find those seeking a solution.

I interpret the mandate “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind” to mean that we are compassionate in our coverage and global in our outreach. Compassion can manifest itself in any number of ways, including story selection. We ran a piece recently about a beauty contest in Rwanda. Why is that a Monitor story? One of the goals of the contest was to challenge physical stereotypes. In a nation where 800,000 people where killed in 1994, mostly based on which ethnic group they appeared to belong to, this contest was a sign of progress. It was about redefining a national identity, going beyond the shape of a nose, hips, or eyes. It was about a higher concept of beauty and womanhood. That’s a Monitor story.

The focus was on the human endeavor to help one’s fellow man, to bring order to a chaotic situation.

CS: The objectives Mrs. Eddy gave for the Monitor factor into daily decisionmaking at the paper—everything from whether to pursue a certain story to how to approach a story to photo selection. In the aftermath of the recent earthquake in China, for instance, many of the available photos depicted terrible human suffering, inconsolable grief, or death—and that was it. The photos our editors selected certainly showed the scale of the damage. We would never try to minimize or play down the seriousness of what had happened. But the images that accompanied the stories were selected so they would not leave readers in a state of despair or hopelessness about the situation. Rather, amid the giant pile of rubble would be a rescue crew working to pull someone to safety, or an emergency feeding station set up to help those made homeless. The focus was on the human endeavor to help one’s fellow man, to bring order to a chaotic situation. It was a small sign that the laws of God—“the Science that operates unspent”—are present and operating even where disaster seems to be.

Mary Baker Eddy founded the Monitor at a time of “yellow journalism,” when stretching the facts, personal vilification, and sensational reports were part of the news industry. She established it after her own difficult brush with the media of her day. Today, we see in the online world a resurgence of some of the same kinds of reporting—based on rumor, hyperbole, and personal attack—that were prevalent more than 100 years ago. The Monitor is still a counterweight to that kind of communication. Its “agenda” is to “bless all mankind”—not just Republicans or Democrats, not just Americans, not just Christians. That’s why we maintain our foreign bureaus and our embrace of the world. It speaks to the universal laws of God, ever operable and available in equal measure to all.

JB: Mary Baker Eddy’s mission for the Monitor is something I think about every day. It’s a daily reminder to me that good journalism—while vitally important—isn’t sufficient to meet the demands she gave this newspaper. The whole world is presenting the mortal picture of life. That’s why it often emphasizes conflict, scandal, and sensationalism. The Monitor strives to see the Christ in action. The Ninth Commandment reminds us to not bear false witness. To me, that’s a driving factor behind the Monitor’s object, “to bless all mankind.” That doesn’t mean we diminish the very major challenges facing the world. We confront them boldly. But we do so without bearing false witness.

Warren Bolon is a Journal senior writer.