Citizen Reader

Are you reading the Christian Science Monitor?

So yeah, I know newspapers are dead, etc. I used to get our local newspaper, first because I really liked reading a newspaper, at least on Sundays.* As the paper got progressively thinner and crappier, pretty soon I really was just getting it for the grocery store coupons. Now my mom hooks me up with those, so I was able to drop my subscription. I did feel a little bad about that, but you know what? Sadly, I cannot afford to support all the dying industries I used to enjoy.

But in my daily reading of Internet headlines in my work for the Reader's Advisor Online blog, I often come across headlines that I find personally interesting. And those headlines are almost exclusively from the Christian Science Monitor. I find that it typically offers quite balanced, well-written, and very wide-ranging news stories. These are the last three links I clicked on:

"A 'rape glut' on TV: How TV Viewers Can Respond" (I clicked on this because I just read Diana Gabaldon's bestselling novel Outlander and was totally grossed out, and now it's been made into a TV series, and was listed in this article)

"Has Apple's CEO Put a Price Tag on Privacy?"

and

"How to Make Your Laptop Last Longer"

And that's an entirely typical sample. They also offer book news and book recommendations from readers, great recipes, and a lot of personal finance articles (these, I find, are usually ridiculously simplistic, but they're still somewhat fun to read).

The Monitor used to be published daily in print (I know, because I used to check it in and put it out at the public library, and I never ever bothered to read it, which I still can't believe), and now they publish weekly. God help me, I've often thought of subscribing, and only knowing that I have way too many other things sitting around here going unread has stopped me.

So what does it mean that it's the "Christian Science" Monitor? Well, it was founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, who was the founder of the Christian Science religion, and to this day it includes a "religious" article (I come across these often and they're not religious in an unctuous way, so they even do that well) in every daily web edition, but it is not really a religious paper. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about its founding:

"The Monitor's inception was, in part, a response by Eddy to the journalism of her day, which relentlessly covered the sensations and scandals surrounding her new religion with varying degrees of accuracy...

Eddy declared that the Monitor's mission should be "to injure no man, but to bless all mankind."

And here's how Wikipedia further describes it: "The paper has been known for avoiding sensationalism, producing a "distinctive brand of nonhysterical journalism"."

Yeah, I can get behind that. Give the Monitor a try.

*Although I freely admit I didn't actually read the news in the newspaper. I read the comics, the lifestyle section (with book reviews, if any), the classifieds, and maybe the local, in that order. I never even read the ads (in fact, I used to just strip them out and toss them, until my roommate said, "Could you save the ads? They're really the only part of the paper I read," which I thought was such a great line, and made me love her all the more).