The Christian Science Monitor reaches the end of the road as a print daily
My late uncle, Walter Munford Harrison, was the managing editor of the Daily Oklahoman (among several other papers) back in the day. He was also president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and edited Stars and Stripes during World War II. Among his other claims to fame was having given both Chester Gould and Bill Mauldin their starts in newspaper cartooning.
His lifelong ambition (never realized) was to edit what he considered the finest daily newspaper in America: the Christian Science Monitor. Uncle Walt and Aunt Anne (my father's sister) were themselves Christian Scientists, as Grandfather and Grandmother Waters had been before them (my grandfather converted to Christian Science after being "healed" of the effects of a stroke which had brought his career as a Presbyterian minister to an end). But Uncle Walt's partiality to the Monitor had nothing to do with religion; with the exception of a single daily article, the paper was scrupulously secular in content. The Monitor was, very simply, one very fine national newspaper.
Sadly, its circulation has declined over the past forty years, and the Monitor has yielded to the inevitable: it's becoming a weekly print publication, and switching its daily operations to the Web.
Who knows? Newspapers all over America are dying, and the Monitor may be ahead of the curve here. But it's still a sad moment to see such a fine publication reach the end of the road in its traditional format. As someone who, if he hadn't gone to seminary, would have gone to "J" school and sought to emulate Uncle Walt in a career in print journalism, I'm doubly sorry to see this day.
His lifelong ambition (never realized) was to edit what he considered the finest daily newspaper in America: the Christian Science Monitor. Uncle Walt and Aunt Anne (my father's sister) were themselves Christian Scientists, as Grandfather and Grandmother Waters had been before them (my grandfather converted to Christian Science after being "healed" of the effects of a stroke which had brought his career as a Presbyterian minister to an end). But Uncle Walt's partiality to the Monitor had nothing to do with religion; with the exception of a single daily article, the paper was scrupulously secular in content. The Monitor was, very simply, one very fine national newspaper.
Sadly, its circulation has declined over the past forty years, and the Monitor has yielded to the inevitable: it's becoming a weekly print publication, and switching its daily operations to the Web.
Who knows? Newspapers all over America are dying, and the Monitor may be ahead of the curve here. But it's still a sad moment to see such a fine publication reach the end of the road in its traditional format. As someone who, if he hadn't gone to seminary, would have gone to "J" school and sought to emulate Uncle Walt in a career in print journalism, I'm doubly sorry to see this day.
Comments