Newspaperman's Newspaper

"All successful newspapers," declaimed querulous, bellicose H. L. Mencken, "are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose." The most conspicuous exception to Mencken's Law is the Christian Science Monitor (circ. 158,729). which never whines, cusses or blusters, but sets out daily, as enjoined by Christian Science Founder Mary Baker Eddy, to ''spread confidence instead of fear, record the good men do instead of magnifying and exploiting the regrettable evil."

Balancing Fact. Fifty years old this year, and firmly fixed as one of the world's most respected dailies, the dignified Monitor permits itself the one gentle brag that it publishes "everything that a well-informed person should know." Since 90% of its press run is mailed to subscribers in the U.S. and 120 other countries. Boston's Monitor ("An International Daily Newspaper") has no truck with trivia, concentrates instead on solid, staff-written interpretative reporting that its editors expect will still be relevant days or weeks later. For this reason, the Monitor gets the ultimate tribute of the news profession: its subscribers include 4,000 editors and newspapers throughout the world, some of whom pay as much as $1,000 a year to have their copies airmailed (worldwide, first-class-mail subscription rate: $18).

To a large extent the Monitor's excellence derives from Editor Erwin Dain Canham, 53, veteran newspaperman who has little but scorn for the artificial "objectivity" that cloaks the superficiality of much news writing. Says "Spike" Canham: "We believe that the balancing fact should be attached directly to the misleading assertion. News interpretation, with all its hazards, is often safer and wiser than printing the bare news alone. Nothing can be more misleading than the unrelated fact, just because it is a fact and hence impressive." Example: during the rise of the late Joe McCarthy, the Monitor was one of the few U.S. dailies that consistently and searchingly matched the balancing facts against the Wisconsin Senator's strident fictions.

"Passed-On Mules." If the church-owned Monitor does not always attain its ideal balance, it is because it agrees with the Christian Scientists who comprise 85% of its readership (and 90% of its staff) that disease, death and violence are mortal "errors." Thus the Monitor gives only token coverage to top medical stories such as the Salk vaccine; it sternly downplays disaster and crime. It shuns error-prone society and show-business chitchat and runs the world's tersest obituaries (omitting the cause of death and names of survivors).

Under gentle, scholarly Spike Canham, the Monitor has shucked many of its old customs, become lighter and brighter. Of late it has run stories about such long-taboo topics as organized crime, prostitution and homosexuality, not infrequently reports that a person has died rather than "passed on"--a sharp departure from World War I days when, it is related, a hard-pressed correspondent, described a battlefield littered with "passed-on mules." When it comes to profit, the Monitor has netted only $260 in the past 15 years; it firmly excludes a long list of advertisers it does not condone (e.g., whiskies, tobacco, patent medicines, coffee, tea) and refuses to run any ad containing the abbreviation "Xmas."

Unpolluted Prose. As decreed by Founder Eddy, who from its first issue vowed to serve "the better class of people everywhere," the Monitor maintains "a steady flow of dispatches designed to pierce the fog of confusion and the dictates of prejudice." has won 89 journalistic awards--most of them, including a 1950 Pulitzer for Edmund Stevens' reporting on Russia, for its international coverage. With seven "overseas" bureaus --the Monitor considers "foreign" a derogatory word--it has one of the best-seasoned corps of foreign correspondents in the business. Explains British-born, 25-year London Staffer John May: "What I write, they print--and for almost any newspaperman, this is a consummation devoutly to be wished for and less and less likely to be consummated."

Though its pay scale is frugal, the Monitor also attracts a high class of newsman. Many, like NBC Commentator Joseph Harsch and New York Herald Tribune Pundit Roscoe Drummond, go inevitably to better jobs. But the average service is 15 years for the 115 Monitor staffers who work in its cathedral-hushed city room, where they turn out prose unpolluted by cigar smoke, gin fumes or profanity.

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