The Monitor was founded in 1908 in part as a response by Mary Baker Eddy to the journalism of her day, which relentlessly covered the sensations and scandals surrounding her new religion with varying accuracy. In addition, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World was consistently critical of Eddy, and this, along with a derogatory article in McClure's, furthered Eddy's decision to found her own media outlet.[4] Eddy also required the inclusion of "Christian Science" in the paper's name, over initial opposition by some of her advisors who thought the religious reference might repel a secular audience.[4]
Eddy also saw a vital need to counteract the fear often spread by media reporting:
Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper, at the price at which we shall issue it, we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.[5]
Eddy declared that The Monitor's mission should be "to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 353:16).[4]
MonitoRadio was a radio service produced by the Church of Christ Scientist between 1984 and 1997. It featured several one-hour news broadcasts a day, as well as top of the hour news bulletins. The service was widely heard on public radio stations throughout the United States. The Monitor later launched an international broadcast over shortwave radio, called the World Service of the Christian Science Monitor. Weekdays were news-led, but weekend schedules were exclusively dedicated to religious programming. That service ceased operations on June 28, 1997.[6]
In 1986, The Monitor started producing a current affairs television series The Christian Science Monitor Reports, which was distributed via syndication to television stations across the United States. In 1988, The Christian Science Monitor Reports won a Peabody Award[7] for a series of reports on Islamic fundamentalism. That same year, the program was cancelled, and The Monitor created a daily television program World Monitor, anchored by former NBC correspondent John Hart, which was initially shown on the Discovery Channel. In 1991, World Monitor moved to the Monitor Channel, a 24-hour news and information channel.[6] The channel launched on May 1, 1991, with programming from its Boston TV station WQTV.[8] The only religious programming on the channel was a five-minute Christian Science program early each morning.[9] In 1992, after eleven months on the air, the service was shut down amid huge financial losses.[10] Programming from the Monitor Channel was also carried nationally via the WWOR EMI Service, a nationally oriented feed of WWOR-TV, a New Jersey-based television station launched in 1990 due to the SyndEx laws put into place the year prior.
21st century
The print edition continued to struggle for readership, and, in 2004, faced a renewed mandate from the church to earn a profit. Subsequently, The Monitor began relying more on the Internet as an integral part of its business model. The Monitor was one of the first newspapers to put its text online in 1996 and also one of the first to launch a PDF edition in 2001. It was also an early pioneer of RSS feeds.[11]
In 2006, Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Monitor, was kidnapped in Baghdad. Although Carroll was initially a freelancer, the paper worked tirelessly for her release, even hiring her as a staff writer shortly after her abduction to ensure that she had financial benefits.[13] She was released safely after 82 days. Beginning in August 2006, the Monitor published an account[14] of Carroll's kidnapping and subsequent release, with first-person reporting from Carroll and others involved.
In October 2008, citing net losses of US$18.9 million per year versus US$12.5 million in annual revenue, The Monitor announced that it would cease printing daily and instead print weekly editions.[15][16] The last daily print edition was published on March 27, 2009.[17]
The weekly magazine follows on from The Monitor's London edition, also a weekly, which launched in 1960, and the weekly World Edition, which replaced the London edition in 1974.[18] Mark Sappenfield became the editor in March 2017.[19]
The Christian Science Monitor is not primarily a religious-themed paper and does not evangelize,[20] though each issue of the paper does usually contain a single religious themed article in the Home Forum section, generally related to a topic from the day's news.[21] The paper reports on issues including natural disasters,[22] disease and mental health issues,[23] homelessness,[24] terrorism,[25] and death.[26] The paper's editorials have advocated against government interference in an individual's right to choose their own form of healthcare.[27] They also support the separation of church and state, and the paper has opposed efforts to teach fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible in science classrooms.[28]
In 1997, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a publication critical of United States policy in the Middle East, praised The Monitor for its objective and informative coverage of Islam and the Middle East.[29]
During the 27 years while Nelson Mandela was in prison in South Africa after having been convicted of sabotage, among other charges, The Christian Science Monitor was one of the newspapers he was allowed to read.[30] Five months after his release, Mandela visited Boston and stopped by The Monitor offices, telling the staff "The Monitor continues to give me hope and confidence for the world's future"[31] and thanking them for their "unwavering coverage of apartheid".[30] Mandela called The Monitor "one of the more important voices covering events in South Africa".[32]
During the era of McCarthyism, a term first coined by The Monitor,[33] the paper was one of the earliest critics of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy.[34]
Circulation
The paper's circulation has ranged widely, from a peak of over 223,000 in 1970 to just under 56,000 shortly before the suspension of the daily print edition in 2009.[35] Partially in response to declining circulation and the struggle to earn a profit, the church's directors and the manager of the Christian Science Publishing Society were purportedly forced to plan cutbacks and closures (later denied), which led in 1989 to the mass protest resignations by its chief editor Kay Fanning (an ASNE president and former editor of the Anchorage Daily News), managing editor David Anable, associate editor David Winder, and several other newsroom staff. Those developments also presaged administrative moves to scale back the print newspaper in favor of expansions into radio, a magazine, shortwave broadcasting, and television. Expenses, however, rapidly outpaced revenues, contradicting predictions by church directors.[6]: 150 On the brink of bankruptcy, the board was forced to close the broadcast programs in 1992.[6]: 163–166
By late 2011, The Monitor was receiving an average of about 22 million hits per month on its website, slightly below the Los Angeles Times.[36] In 2017, the Monitor put up a paywall on its content, and in 2018, there were approximately 10,000 subscriptions to the Monitor Daily email service.[37] As of September 2023[update], the number of hits had fallen to 1 million per month.[38]
^Jill Carroll (August 14, 2006). "Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story". The Christian Science Monitor. Archived from the original on March 14, 2009. Retrieved January 30, 2013.
Strout, Lawrence N. (1999). Covering McCarthyism: how the 'Christian Science Monitor' handled Joseph R. McCarthy, 1950-1954. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
