Monday, Sep. 26, 1988
A Mild Matron Goes Modern
By Richard Zoglin
TV's newest evening newscast contains no crime footage, no clips of Bush and Dukakis trading jabs on the campaign trail, no fluffy features on roller- skating or baseball-card collectors. A typical show last week opened instead with a nearly 6-min. report on the upcoming election in Chile. That was followed by an examination of political unrest in Burma, which began in the leisurely tones of a travelogue: "Burma, a gentle land, devoutly Buddhist, dotted with the spires of golden pagodas, a place where time seems to be standing still . . ."
For viewers of World Monitor, a nightly program of international news produced by the Christian Science Monitor, time does seem to be standing still. The program, which debuted last week on cable's Discovery Channel, has ) the meaty content and sober style of an earlier, less frantic TV era. Yet, to its creators, the show is not a look backward but an effort to bring a respected but somewhat stodgy news organization into the 1980s.
Founded in 1908 by the Church of Christ, Scientist, the Boston-based Monitor was created, in the words of its first editor, Archibald McLellan, to "publish the real news of the world in a clean, wholesome manner" -- a rarity in an era of yellow journalism. It soon won a reputation for thoughtful, analytical coverage of foreign events. In the 1970s, however, its readership began to dwindle. Worldwide circulation last year was 176,000 -- up from a 1982 low of 144,000 but still small for a national daily. Worse, the median age of its readers is a mature 58. The paper last turned a profit in 1961; this year's losses are expected to total $15 million.
Recently the Monitor has been trying to overcome its dowdy image by expanding into other media. The Monitor's four-year-old weekly radio program is now carried on more than 220 public radio stations. Its shortwave broadcasts, begun last year, will be heard in every part of the globe by early next year. A syndicated TV series (first monthly, later weekly) was introduced in 1985 and was seen on 103 stations before being supplanted this fall by the nightly newscast. This month also marks the debut of World Monitor, a slick monthly magazine on global affairs that hit its target of 250,000 subscriptions after just five weeks of marketing.
The new TV newscast has some impressive credentials. Its anchor is former NBC and CBS Correspondent John Hart, and its managing editor is Sandy Socolow, once a top producer of the CBS Evening News. The show, with its mauve, lavender and salmon-colored set, has a polished network look, though its focus on foreign news would be shunned by network news chiefs. "To us," says Executive Producer Daniel Wilson, "Washington is just another world capital."
The new venture has caused dismay among some Monitor staffers, who worry that it is diverting resources and may signal that church officials are losing faith in their flagship publication. Company executives deny this. "The paper is the fundamental building block on which the other elements rest," says Editor Katherine Fanning. Yet she concedes that among the staff "there is concern about these things being a great deal on our plate at the moment."
Changes may be in the wind at the newspaper, which has long operated by its own quietly idiosyncratic rule book. A daily 4 p.m. deadline means that much breaking news is missed, and the paper gives little attention to such reader- grabbing subjects as sports and business. An internal task force has been exploring possible changes, and will submit a report next month. Insiders say it will probably suggest an even greater emphasis on the Monitor's strong suit: foreign-news coverage. Meanwhile, Monitor executives are hoping that its broadcast ventures, none of which are yet making money, will become profit centers. Says John Hoagland Jr., manager of the Christian Science Publishing Society: "We need to be a success in the marketplace to avoid being a museum."
With reporting by Sam Allis/Boston