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Commitment to freedom; the story of the Christian Science Monitor

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The author began work on the MONITOR staff in 1925. The MONITOR is crusading and reformative. The newspaper is published as a public service. The content must measure up to a system of value judgments. Its chief distinction has been constant interest in world affairs.

The men who founded THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR started from scratch. They had a finished product in one hundred days. One of the first stories in the new newspaper concerned the Charles River Dam creating the setting for MIT and millionaires row on Beacon Street in the Back Bay.

People have forgotten how bad many of the newspapers were in 1908. Accuracy is held to be more important than speed. The MONITOR has always been willing to wait and to qualify. The MONITOR sometimes erred through its extreme receptivity to new technical ideas.

In the early days of the MONITOR policies had to be worked out. Working each case on the merits is not easy for operative journalism. In modern times there have been few MONITOR taboos.

This is the story of a religion and its newspaper for general readers by an insider. It is also a competent account of the paper's history by an accomplished journalist. Anecdotes selected are interesting and illustrative. The book covers the dispute between the church publishing society and the board of directors resolved in 1921 and the resurrection of the newpaper's circulation during the following two years.

Mary Baker Eddy, in her 80s, started the Christian Science Monitor to give real journalism to the country and eventually to the world. At the time, yellow journalism, or tabloid news was so widespread that fair reporting was hard to come by. This is a very interesting book filled with history and insight that proved to be true and valuable to the country and sometimes to the world. It also shows that things have not changed much in the past 100 years. Politicians are still doing business the same way.
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