Customer Reviews

Monitoring the News: The Brilliant Launch and Sudden Collapse of the Monitor Channel

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Susan Bridge provides information about a relatively "cloaked" period in the Christian Science movement, and although her book wasn't intended to inform church members about the happenings as they related to the church itself, it is an excellent vehicle for doing so.The book is a good read for those individuals interested in the area of media and the news, even though it draws some bleak conclusions for positive changes in the future in the way we receive our news. The recent Walters/Lewinsky interview is a chilling example of the direction we might be headed, but it is a must reading for every Christian Scientist who is interested in what took place in Boston from approximately 1984-1992.I think it is well written, well documented, and very interesting. I also felt she was fair in her writing and kept as impartial perspective about the entire situation as possible under the circumstances. She leaves questions to be answered by each reader. Was it a good direction? Was it overly expensive? Would it have been an additional or even a replacement medium for providing the quality of news Mary Baker Eddy desired when she founded the Christian Science Monitor--a newspaper that has not broken even financially for decades? Were individual personalities responsible for the failure? What other factors came into play in this whole scenario that impacted the concepts and their implementation.It certainly will make you think.

Bridge's book sheds real light on a fascinating story that only an insider such as she could tell with such authority and understanding. A most useful case-study of a fallen communication enterprise that seemed doomed from the start. This is a book that every broadcast professional and academic should read. Well-documented and thoroughly compelling.

A classic case of poor journalism. Initially designed as a ghost written book for the management team that created one of Boston's greatest fiscal disasters. Few objective sources were used, documentation of the "other side" was white washed.

A classic case of the paranoia that encompasses this book is the claim that the Boston Globe sought to destroy this TV project out of fear of competition. The plans for the Monitor Channel and the subsequent efforts were based on the management team's firm assumption that owning the distribution process (transponder et al) was the critical element to sucess (they bought and built shortwave stations-the distribution network for their radio efforts- around the globe, only to sell them at great losses as revenue hopes crashed).

As the internet evolves we all see that owning the distribution method is precisely the wrong strategy; content is the main goal. Meeting the viewers and readers needs is the only priority. This was the fundamental error and the book tends to gloss over this as well as the millions spent of extravegant employment contracts, offices, dinners and travel.

However this books tries to justify the millions of dollars tossed out the door to launch a project that only the highest paid consultants would endorse (those that disagreed were were terminated). A fact never addressed.

All in all academics should be more than skeptical as they take a look at this book. It was designed as a PR piece and takes liberties with facts, facts that distort this avoidable financial debacle.

While the subject of the Christian Science Monitor's failed attempt at broadcasting could be fodder for an interesting examination (like "Citizen Kane" a kind of journalistic soap opera), the problem with MONITORING THE NEWS is that the author seems so preoccupied with justifying herself (and the past actions of a handful of uninteresting people), that she fails to present a real-life story in a compelling way.

Given that the author is a former employee of Monitor Television, it is understandable that she feels a need to defend her own work. Unfortunately in telling her story she uses the same small group of sources, and seems unable to critically step back and seperate her own involvement from a bigger picture.

In the final analysis the book seems an exercise in egotism.

I was very dissappointed in reading this book. There was more fact and information in the notes then the actual text, I felt the author was giving an over view of the other resource material she had found.

I also found the book very one-sided. Defending the actions of the two key players. As someone who was also an employee of the Monitor Channel during this time, I was amazed at how many inacurate facts there were!

As I finished the book, the only question I had was why did I read it?

I am not a Christian Scientist and have no stake in the church arguments over media which Bridges documents.

As I read the book, I was interested in the larger issues Bridges claims she will address: how do events at the CS Monitor reflect the situation of all US journalism?

Sadly, Bridges seems so interested in defending the actions of her colleagues and herself that she doesn't really examine this larger issue.

Also, the writing is terrible. The sentences are poorly constructed, and Bridges uses way too many unnecessary adjectives (perhaps forgetting that adjectives cannot substitute for evidence). By the time I finished, I felt that if she used the word "upshot" ("The upshot was . . .") one more time I would have to run screaming from the room.

The only reason to read this book is to get a glimpse of the primary sources Bridges cites. Read the quotes and the footnotes--I'd skip the rest.

Once again, the Monitor's fundamental intent, as expressed by Mary Baker Eddy, is overlooked and not understood--by the author and Netty Douglass et al.

The object: "To injure no man but bless all mankind," cited repeatedly in MTN, is the corollary, following the fundamental activity and statement made in the omitted first part of the quote from the Monitor's first editorial, where MBE says, speaking of the periodicals she founded: "The next I named 'Monitor,' to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent."

Although the Monitor's mission was never to prosyletize or be a missionary for the C.S. Church institution, it clearly is meant to further the underlying principle, i.e. Christian Science.

It is this blind spot that made the broadcasting project--the way Jack, Netty, et al went about it--destined to fail from the start.

While always putting things in the most positive light for Jack and Netty, from a cursory reading it seems MTN does cover most of the important points.