From the editor: The Monitor's next century

All and more was put on record during the past 100 years by the Monitor. It is the same world described by Barbara Tuchman, David McCullough, Eric Hobsbawm, and a thousand other historians. Each historian – and every journalist writing history’s first draft – has his or her own take. Was the century about folly and failure? Great men and women? Class warfare? What was the theme?

The Monitor had its take, too. It unflinchingly reported on what our founder called the “incredible good and evil elements now coming to the surface.” It saw hope in women’s rights, minority rights, workers’ rights, human rights. It raised alarms over massacres, repression, wrongdoing.

Now a new book opens. It is tempting to project from the present to 2108. I’d start where everybody starts – with the Internet, of course. And nanotech and biotech. The rise of India, China, and Brazil. The planet’s environmental and economic crises.

But that would only describe the next few years. Twenty, 50, 100 years out, a world of wonder will become part of our lives so gradually that each invention and event will be as commonplace as TVs and airplanes are today.

Though the Monitor’s means of publishing may change as much in 100 years as it has in the past century – from thundering printing presses and clattering teletypes to the instantly updated Web – our journalists will be recording the unfolding future with the same lens of clarity and hope.

Note to Monitor editor in 2108: You are probably smiling at the idea that we considered the Internet modern. You may be appalled that we chopped down trees, pulped wood, and distributed printed pages as the second Monitor century dawned. I won’t try to explain Warhol or Wookies: Look them up.

Are you still situated on that beautiful campus in the Back Bay, the one with the magnificent Mother Church at its center? I hope so. However different your life is from mine, I know we are on the same page about the mission given to us by the woman who founded both Christian Science and The Christian Science Monitor: to inform and explain the world – terrestrial and beyond – in a way that harms no one and dignifies all.

The first Monitor was published on a gray November day. Mrs. Eddy was so happy about the accomplishment that she called it “the lightest of all days.” Future Monitor editor: I hope the light is still shining brightly in the 22nd century.
r John Yemma became the Monitor’s 14th editor in July 2008.

Previous

1 | 2