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Progress report: How the Monitor is doing

The start of a new fiscal year finds The Christian Science Monitor reaching more readers than ever, in its strongest financial position in more than half a century, and continuing to pursue meaningful news around the world.

To our readers:

May 1, the start of a new fiscal year for the Monitor, finds us in the healthiest financial situation since 1961 (that’s on an inflation-adjusted basis; unadjusted, it’s the best since 1978). Over the past four years, we have decreased the subsidy we have been receiving from The First Church of Christ, Scientist, by 50 percent. Our goal as a non-profit is financial self-sufficiency. With your help we are making steady progress toward that.

Monitor journalism reaches more people today than ever. About 12 million individuals a month read Monitor articles. We've heard from many of you and know that you range from political leaders in Washington to colleagues in the media, college students to civic-minded retirees, entrepreneurs to executives. What you all have in common is a need for thoughtful, no-nonsense news that helps you engage with your community -- whether that community is as close as your neighborhood or as varied as the planet. A few recent examples of that sort of news:

- Our May 6 Monitor Weekly cover story "Facing Terror: How free and open societies are adapting to a more insecure world."

- Our April 15 cover "The Dealmakers: How work gets done in the new politics of Congress."

- Our intimate March 11 report on how a church community in Newtown, Conn., is working through the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy.

Every day, meanwhile, our website, CSMonitor.com, stays atop the news -- from the Syrian civil war to the upcoming elections in Pakistan; the stock market to Europe's struggle with debt and austerity; the Obama presidency to the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

And for an efficient summary of the stories that matter each morning, we offer the Monday-through-Friday Monitor Daily News Briefing. 

Because technology, business, and reader habits are constantly changing, we are constantly working to keep the Monitor up to date and useful. This summer, we’ll be rolling out an improved digital edition of the Monitor Weekly. We’ll also be updating CSMonitor.com. We are also developing new channels to deliver specialized Monitor journalism to global thinkers.

Like many news organizations, the Monitor is navigating a challenging path to financial sustainability. Your support -- via subscriptions to the Monitor Weekly and the Daily News Briefing and by visiting CSMonitor.com -- makes possible the continuation of 105 years of journalism that helps readers understand the world’s problems, seeks out the world’s problem-solvers, and reports progress when it occurs.

John Yemma is editor of the Monitor. He can be reached at editor@csmonitor.com.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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.

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