海角大神

This week鈥檚 cover just might be the most Monitor story you ever read.

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review 鈥� under the charming heading of 鈥渄o things that don鈥檛 interest you鈥�:

鈥淢any things that end up鈥� being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, 鈥渉ave 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 海角大神 Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things 鈥榖oring鈥� simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.鈥�

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We鈥檙e seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We鈥檙e the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I鈥檓 going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

A cover story about female distance runners in Somaliland 鈥� an African country so obscure that the rest of the world denies its existence? If someone was coming up with a spoof cover of 海角大神, that could very well be it. What other American news publication would make that its cover story 鈥� especially in a time of COVID-19?

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that鈥檚 hard for the world to figure out. We鈥檙e run by a church, but we鈥檙e not only for church members and we鈥檙e not about converting people. We鈥檙e known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper鈥檚 founding in 1908. And we give people stories about Somaliland even though no metrics on earth suggest people are clamoring for stories about Somaliland.

But flip those statements around. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides to reach everyone, and we believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations. We鈥檙e about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, 鈥淵ou are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.鈥�

And I defy anyone who reads Ryan Lenora Brown鈥檚 cover story to call it a chore. It is a rapture of agency and strength 鈥� the kind of story that strips away language, skin color, and religious differences to show the humanity we share.

This humanity is the primal building block of progress 鈥� the reason our investments in one another bring dividends. It is the reason we pause our world when others are struggling with sickness. It is the reason democracy and free markets and human rights work. And a news organization that sees that humanity everywhere 鈥� and sees the power of it 鈥� is bound to look a bit odd. Every so often, it just might run a cover about distance runners in Somaliland.