Although close to 30 percent of Laredo’s population lives below the poverty level, a wealth of natural resources and trading opportunities has led to a strong economy. The transportation, warehousing and distribution sectors have long been sources of dependable revenue for the city. More recently, oil and gas conglomerate Eagle Ford Shale has moved onto the scene, and its natural gas and oil drilling activities has increased city employment and led to an increase in sales tax growth. The third-largest city along the US-Mexico border, it has been shielded somewhat from the US recession and is able to operate like a quasi-global economy. The city’s budget has notched seven consecutive years of general fund operating surpluses. The metro population has grown by more than a third since 2000. More than 95 percent are Hispanic.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
