How does the Monitor report fairly on the rising number of important U.S. politicians who are reaching advanced ages – and getting ever greater media and public scrutiny over issues of mental acuity? Two longtime Washington reporters, Linda Feldmann, the Monitor’s D.C. bureau chief, and Gail Chaddock, guest host and former congressional correspondent, discuss how not to get swept up in a prevailing narrative.
Why is Christian Science in our name?
Why is Christian Science in our name?
Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.
The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.
Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.
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Why We Wrote This
Who reports the news? People. And at The Christian Science Monitor, we believe that it’s our job to report each story with a sense of shared humanity. Through conversations with our reporters and editors, we explain the qualities behind our reporting that affect how we approach the news. Behind today’s headlines we find respect, resilience, dignity, agency, and hope. “Why We Wrote This” shows how. The Monitor is an award-winning, nonpartisan news organization with bureaus around the globe. Visit CSMonitor.com/whywewrotethis to learn more.
Talk about seeing the forest for the trees. When Jingnan Peng, a multimedia reporter as well as regular producer of this show, caught wind of a forest-planting project near our Boston base, he grabbed his video camera and a drone. The story he ended up filming: that of Maya Dutta, whose work with Biodiversity for a Livable Climate has her creating Miyawaki forests. For this episode – partly an encore of one in which Jing described his approach to videography – Jing spoke to host Clay Collins about how he found this story, why it’s a natural Monitor piece, and how it fits his oeuvre.
Journalists on the culture beat often get to be on hand for big events. Usually they can see them coming. As Season 2 of the Welsh football series “Welcome to Wrexham” rolls out on FX, the Monitor’s Stephen Humphries relives a May assignment that dropped him into the stadium where a low-tier team would notch an improbable victory. He tells guest host Kendra Nordin Beato about the surge of fan identity that the team’s win gave to its sleepy hometown – and to a larger community beyond.
Photography does so much to humanize reporting. What does it mean to come at stories quite literally through the “Monitor lens” that this show explores? A longtime staff shooter who has made images in more than 80 countries and on every continent, Melanie Stetson Freeman talks with host Clay Collins about joyful moments and sobering ones, and about how the people and places she encounters still bring surprises after all of that travel and all of those years.
What does it take to report on a disaster sensitively, safely, and through a Monitor lens? How can a reporter find credible hope for eventual renewal amid devastation? Writer Sarah Matusek spoke to host Clay Collins about reporting from West Maui immediately following the Aug. 8 fires – and about finding generosity and agency in abundance.
Debates have been a part of American politics at least since the Lincoln-Douglas Senate tilt became, perhaps unfairly, kind of a standard-setter. Some (Kennedy-Nixon) have been media moments. Some (Bentsen-Quayle) have spawned sound bites that ricocheted through a race. They can entertain. They can inform. As a new debate season kicks off, what does it mean to size them up for substance? Veteran Washington reporter Peter Grier spoke to guest host Gail Russell Chaddock.
Small-group learning has been around for a while. It got a boost from pandemic learning pods. Are microschools – essentially modern-day one-room schoolhouses – effective? Education writer Jackie Valley joins host Clay Collins to discuss her reporting on an emerging trend that one proponent says is about “building a civil society from scratch” – and that others hail as a transformational, bottom-up movement that could ultimately help reform U.S. education.
Honest, well-presented data ought to be ironclad. In what some have dubbed a “post-truth” age, however, numbers can be dismissed simply for not matching a chosen narrative. Jake Turcotte builds graphics and data visualizations for the Monitor. He spoke with host Clay Collins about the importance of arraying data that presents information in a way that’s credible, digestible, and a tool for helping readers make up their own minds about complex stories.
A new museum went up this summer in Charleston, South Carolina, at the site of Gadsden’s Wharf. From this spot, through which thousands of enslaved people were forced, writer Ken Makin reported a story of progress toward reclamation – and of hard work left to be done. He spoke with host Clay Collins about the transformation of this harrowing place, and about how it left room to celebrate a culture’s will to thrive.
How much more effective is journalism when its practitioners take extra care to account for local perspectives and practices? And what does it mean when media organizations stay with their stories over time? Xanthe Scharff’s reporting in Malawi in 2005 and then again this year helps answer both questions. She and her recent colleague Madalo Samati – a mentor Xanthe met when she shifted from reporting to actively participating – spoke with guest host Amelia Newcomb.
