What happens when a storied journalism brand moves to sharpen its long-standing approach to news? For our second episode, we spoke to Monitor Editor Mark Sappenfield about the Monitor’s renewed commitment to focusing on what’s universal – and uniting – about the human experience. Hosted by Samantha Laine Perfas.
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.
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Why float a new podcast into the sea of podcasts? At the Monitor, we see the world in a different way, with an eye to progress and credible hope, yes, but also to the common values that undergird the shared human experience. In this new podcast, we share the stories behind our stories. Host Samantha Laine Perfas talks with editor Clayton Collins and producer Jingnan Peng about the launch of “Why We Wrote This.”
This new weekly podcast features conversations with Monitor reporters and editors that help explain how we approach the news – and how we find shared values such as respect, resilience, dignity, agency, and hope behind the headlines. Host Samantha Laine Perfas explains.
Sides have long been staked out on nuclear power: It’s either a poisonous menace or a means of getting past dirty, extractive energy production. The Monitor’s Stephanie Hanes, who covers climate change and the environment, explores a rising middle ground. Hosted by Samatha Laine Perfas.
Writer Martin Kuz remembers his father’s love for Ukraine. As Martin traveled the country reporting, including for a story on how Ukrainians find dignity and hope in honoring people they’ve lost in the ongoing war, he could see even more clearly the depth of Ukrainians’ resolve. Hosted by Samantha Laine Perfas.
What goes into writing a weekly survey of where in the world things are going right? A fair assessment of what credible “progress” actually is, and a determination to present a diversity of coverage. Staff writer Erika Page talks with editor Clay Collins about the Monitor’s long-running Points of Progress feature.
“Goodnight Moon,” the Margaret Wise Brown classic read to children across generations, has its 75th anniversary on Sept. 3. The Monitor’s Harry Bruinius talks about a book that’s “modern and odd and elliptical” – one that was radical in its day, and that has since worked its way into so many bedtime rituals. Hosted by Samantha Laine Perfas.
As a reporter, Ned Temko had a front-row seat to a remarkable string of world-changing events. As a Monitor columnist, he looks for global patterns. And at a time of mounting global stressors, he sees a spirit of communality emerging as a simple human response. In this episode, Ned speaks with the Monitor’s Clay Collins about the work of connecting world events and the underlying human impulses.
Alfredo Sosa, the Monitor’s director of photography, relishes fieldwork – no matter how challenging – for the humbling connections that it brings. He spoke to the Monitor’s Samantha Laine Perfas about his rigorous recent assignment to capture the high-altitude work of a wildfire lookout in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness.
How did a reporter’s story evolve from being a report on Saudi Arabia’s economic reorientation to one about that society’s fundamental, bottom-up change? The Monitor’s Taylor Luck speaks with host Samantha Laine Perfas about finding in a notebook the scribbled asides that would actually form the heart of his story.
