British historian John Welshman is a dogged researcher who pays special attention to the often-neglected third-class passengers. But although Welshman borrows a phrase from leading Titanic author Lord for the title of his new book, Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town (Oxford University Press, 416 pp.), he lacks Lord’s legendary flair. Welshman’s prose in “Titanic” is earnest and flat, and his approach leans toward the academic. None of the characters, including several who get short shrift in other books, truly comes alive. This might be because Welshman isn’t interested in personal foibles as are the authors of the other new books. It’s also possible that his focus on the nonglamorous – a stewardess, a servant, a Finnish migrant – left him with less-than-scintillating material.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About 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”:
“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. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. 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.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. 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 have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
