2019
September
30
Monday

Monitor Daily Podcast

September 30, 2019
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Amelia Newcomb
Senior editor

Welcome to a new week. Today’s five stories tackle solutions to the decline in local news, questions about Ukraine and the Biden family, the assumptions rooted in identity politics, adjusting aid to refugees’ changing needs – and how taking a different view of fellow summer travelers at a crowded Yellowstone changed the whole experience.

But first, a question: Is there a kinder, gentler capitalism to be had?

The Business Roundtable recently caused a stir by asking firms to “continue to push for an economy that serves all Americans.” Billionaire hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio has questioned if there’s “equal opportunity for the American dream.”  In “The Economist’s Hour,” Binyamin Appelbaum writes, “[the market revolution] has come at the expense of economic equality, of the health of liberal democracy.”

So it’s worth taking note of those setting a compassionate example.

The CEO of Gravity Payments in Boise, Idaho, announced last week that starting pay would be increased $10,000, with further bumps to come – and cut his own pay to do it. Having done this once before, Dan Price says the move was difficult – but the payoff is employees who can save more or get out of debt.

Briton Julian Richer recently announced he would sell a majority stake in his company, Richer Sounds, to a trust owned by staff, who would also get a bonus. He has written that “organisations that create a culture based on fairness, honesty and respect reap the rewards.”

And then there’s Hampton University in Virginia. Setting a standard for future leaders, it just welcomed 46 undergraduates from the hurricane-devastated north campus of the University of the Bahamas. They’ll attend for free – no small offer for a university to make. But as President William Harvey told them: “I want you new Hamptonians to understand that giving of yourself to others is one of the greatest things you can bestow.”


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

A deeper look

Richland Source
To engage community members, an online news startup in Mansfield, Ohio, the Richland Source, holds free Newsroom After Hours concerts in its offices that feature local bands and are open to the public.

The Explainer

Taylor Luck
Syrian medical student Shahem Al Boni, fresh off his first week of on-the-job training at Prince Hamza Hospital, stands on the rooftop of his apartment in Amman, Jordan, on Aug. 31, 2019.

Essay

Ann Hermes/Staff/File
Tourists flock to Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park on June 16, 2016, in Wyoming. When Monitor writer Mark Trumbull traveled to Yellowstone this summer, his family made a conscious decision to see other visitors as companions rather than obstacles.

The Monitor's View

AP
A mobile football game app is displayed in Las Vegas.

A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

A message of love

Christian Murdock/The Gazette/AP
Sheep herders create a traffic jam on a warm fall day as they move their flock down Gunnison County Road 12 below Kebler Pass toward Paonia, Colorado, Sept. 25, 2019.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Karen Norris. )

A look ahead

Thanks for starting your week with us. Tomorrow, we'll have an on-the-ground report from staff writer Ann Scott Tyson in Hong Kong, where the intensifying protests are a dark spot for Beijing as it marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. 

More issues

2019
September
30
Monday
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