Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower were close friends until Eisenhower ran for president. When he did so, the two men assured one another that no matter what stories were spread during the campaign, their friendship would not be affected. However, when Truman sent an invitation to both Eisenhower and his opponent, Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson, to be briefed on national security matters, then have lunch at the White House and attend a cabinet meeting, only Stevenson accepted. Eisenhower, instead, telegrammed the White House, saying that communication between himself and Truman "should be only those which are known to all the American people" so he could be free to offer criticism on the current regime and the Democratic party. Truman was not happy, and later misunderstandings, including what Truman viewed as Eisenhower's failure to defend former Secretary of Defense George Marshall from an attack by Senator Joe McCarthy, worsened their relationship. Fences were later mended after Eisenhower left office, when Eisenhower visited Truman to ask for advice on how to design his private library.
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.
