Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.
The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.
Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.
Over the past four decades, I’ve had the great privilege of traveling on assignment for the Monitor to seven continents, 90 countries, and 49 states (sorry, North Dakota, I’ll get to work on that!). At the start of my career, I sometimes felt like Dorothy in Oz – untethered from my regular life and overwhelmed by all that was new.
But something funny happened. The more unfamiliarity I saw, the less different it seemed. My goal, then as now, was to bring home photographs that told stories. And gradually, the images I made seemed less about how far away and exotic those locations are than about the people I met in them, people not so different from you and me, people whose hopes and dreams are powerfully similar to our own.
This year, as it happens, my favorite photos bear that out. They come from close to where I live – as close as next door – proving you don’t have to go far to make photographs that touch you. I was moved by neighbor girls enjoying juicy watermelon ... a new American citizen proudly pledging allegiance for the first time ... pig yoga, in which most participants had more fun petting piglets than doing the downward dog ... an old barn framed by fall leaves.
Beautiful things are all around us if we stay curious and keep looking – even in places we pass every day, even if we’ve been around the world. Dorothy might have been right. Sometimes, there really is “no place like home.”
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The other photos that I loved in 2024 are below.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, CALIF.: Migrants who have crossed from Mexico walk into the United States before being detained by border agents, April 1.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, CALIF.: Sam Schultz, who gives humanitarian aid to migrants, stands at the border wall with Mexico, April 1.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
NEW YORK: Salomé, an artist, singer, actor, and music teacher, sits in the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer in the East Village, where she plays the organ, May 24.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
BOSTON: Linda Smith speaks about the loss of her son, Dre’shaun Johnson, near The Gun Violence Memorial Project at City Hall, Oct. 9. M
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
BOSTON: Garry Monteiro stands on the stairs of 140 Clarendon, the Back Bay building that became his home after he had lived in shelters for two years, Jan. 26.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
WINCHESTER, MASS.: Blacksmith Jim Curry (right) turns guns into jewelry and tools at The Parish of the Epiphany, Oct. 6.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
KEENESBURG, COLO.: Mobo the tiger sticks his head out of his shelter into the warm sun at The Wild Animal Sanctuary, Nov. 10.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: Lynn Rosenbaum (from left), Sam Whyte, and Patti Gurekian introduce themselves via song in a CircleSinging session at St. Mary Orthodox Church, Aug. 18.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
PORT-ROYAL, NOVA SCOTIA: Paul Lalonde, an interpretive officer for Parks Canada, appears in costume at the Habitation, a replica of an original French settlement, Sept. 19
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
NEW YORK: A rose grows in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden, Aug. 27.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
NORTH OF KRAMER JUNCTION, CALIF.: Goldfields (Lasthenia gracilis) and purple scorpion weed (Phacelia crenulata) cover the ground in the Mojave Desert, April 3.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y.: Tour guide Emily Fretwell interacts with Pietro the steer at Farm Sanctuary, which rescues and provides refuge for farm animals, June 10.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
WATKINS GLEN, N.Y.: Rescued goats nuzzle each other at Farm Sanctuary, June 10.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
BOSTON: Harbor seal Amelia, who is 39, gets her teeth brushed by senior trainer Alainna Chretien at the New England Aquarium, Nov. 21.
Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
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.
Melanie Stetson Freeman Staff photographer
