When Harry Truman came to office in 1945, he was deeply concerned about the millions of European refugees who lacked food and realized that the man best prepared to deal with the problem would be Herbert Hoover, the former president who helped to feed Europe after World War I. Despite political differences, the current and former president worked on the project together, an effort that included sending Hoover to Argentina to ask just-elected president Juan Perón to increase food exports. Later collaborations between the two presidents included Truman's push to restructure the job of president, a change Hoover helped him carry out by expressing his support to such people as Congressman George Bender and later by serving as chairman for the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government. During the process to restructure the presidency, Truman called Hoover "the best man that I know of." In a letter, Hoover thanked Truman for asking for his help, especially after former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had reportedly avoided association with Hoover because of the latter's unpopularity. "You undid some disgraceful action that had been taken in the prior years," Hoover wrote to Truman. "For all of this and your friendship, I am deeply grateful."
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.
