Many analysts believe the most important part of these Summits are not the official statements but the unofficial meetings that occur on the sidelines. Everyone wants to know what Obama will say to Chavez, but the other meetings will be equally important if less high profile. Will Piñera talk to Morales about border issues? Does Lugo have anything to say to Kirchner given recent trade disputes? Will Humala and Santos talk about counter-insurgency and Shining Path-FARC issues? Do Calderon and Dilma talk about the upcoming G20 meeting? Do Ortega and Chinchilla speak to each other at all? With 528 potential bilateral meetings among leaders, plus dozens of other cabinet and other government officials who can talk, there is a lot that can happen on the margins. Smart reporters and analysts at the Summit and abroad are going to be looking for signs of bilateral discussions among countries that aren't always in the same room. That's where real work is most likely to get done.
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.
