If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides.
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’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. 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. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “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.
A little competition can go a long way.Ībout 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”: Now, my girls and I are trying to think up the next challenge.
Even I, as a climate journalist, had simply not noticed the plastic coating our lives. Even here, most of the products were wrapped in plastic, from the lettuce to the tofu.“Mama, what are we going to do about cheese?” my little one finally stammered. We persevered that week, if a bit hungrily and with a cheddar craving. (I’d been reporting about plastic for a while – watch for a cover story coming up, or this graphic explainer.)The girls were in.We collected our reusable shopping bags and jars, and drove (I know, I know) to the local food co-op. And while I tell myself that one day these contests may evolve into pro-social habits, mostly I like them because they seem to work, my girls are happy, and I scratch one or two things off the never-ending to-do list. So when I read climate scientist Peter Kalmus’ 2017 book, “Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution,” I was intrigued. Among many other things, his book proposes personal behavior shifts – using only cash, eschewing industrial beverages, avoiding all packaging – often beginning as a week- or monthlong personal challenge. Over breakfast, I outlined our mission: For a week, I said, we were going to shop without buying any plastic. I have set up contests for making beds and tending the litter box, running soccer drills and practicing instruments. The week began, as do all good weeks with my children, with an official challenge. A family’s competitive streak, after all, can be magically exploited for parental gain.
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