How does the Monitor鈥檚 film critic decide what to review 鈥� especially in festival settings? For Peter Rainer, it鈥檚 about staying moored by his own long experience and curating with a Monitor audience in mind. After the Toronto festival in 2023, Peter spoke on our podcast about how he does that. The films have changed; the work has not. We鈥檝e reprised some of that episode this week.
Why We Wrote This
Who reports the news? People. And at 海角大神, we believe that it鈥檚 our job to report each story with a sense of shared humanity. Through conversations with our reporters and editors, we explain the qualities behind our reporting that affect how we approach the news. Behind today鈥檚 headlines we find respect, resilience, dignity, agency, and hope. 鈥淲hy We Wrote This鈥� shows how. The Monitor is an award-winning, nonpartisan news organization with bureaus around the globe. Visit CSMonitor.com/whywewrotethis to learn more.
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Hopes, fears, and hard decisions: The stories of would-be immigrants are stories that matter. So, too, are the stories and views of the many other stakeholders in the immigration debate, including U.S. ranchers whose land becomes the first zones of contention. Monitor writer Sarah Matusek is based in Denver, a city that has received thousands of people from South and Central American countries over the past two years. She joined host Clay Collins to talk about reporting a sprawling story with completeness and compassion.
What鈥檚 it like being in a president鈥檚 presence at big moments? What about at small ones, as when the commander-in-chief offers to buy you a burger? It鈥檚 all part of working in the press pool, where a hand-picked gaggle of reporters chronicles the president鈥檚 moves in real time and faithfully feeds detailed missives to the wider media. Linda Feldmann, who has cycled through the work for two decades, and Sophie Hills, who鈥檚 just getting her feet wet, joined veteran D.C. writer and our podcast鈥檚 guest host to describe the work and tell some tales.
An Americana-infused folk music revival has been a surging in the United States for years now. Georgia鈥檚 Jake Xerxes Fussell has emerged as one of the most singular interpreters of that music and all of its tributaries. Writer (and fan) Simon Montlake, a hard-news reporter most of the time, joins host Clay Collins to talk about why the modest Mr. Fussell is worth discovering 鈥� and about what folk music means to the transmission, down through generations, of the cultures it preserves.
Drug decriminalization is another story that often sets up as a binary debate: It's either a path to societal meltdown or a way to regulate behaviors that appear inevitable, and to stop filling jails. Test cases in three places 鈥� Portland, Oregon; British Columbia, Canada; and Portugal 鈥� show that solutions require very nuanced thinking. And compassion. Yvonne Zipp, our features editor, introduces this episode, which includes full story reads by three Monitor writers.
When a sports-loving writer gets a shot at covering an Olympic Games, the story becomes one of joyful immersion and inspired output. Ira Porter joins host Clay Collins for this episode about reporting from the Paris Games and finding the human stories that matter most in that sea of competition and aspiration, heartbreak and triumph.
Reporting straight news can be an outsider鈥檚 game: Get the facts, look for color, file on deadline, repeat. Gathering news that鈥檚 meaningful to readers, news that鈥檚 human and relatable, often means collaborating with a region鈥檚 own reporters. Two Monitor writers who also co-write stories and edit journalists from across Latin America and Africa join guest host Amelia Newcomb, our managing editor, to talk about balancing the special challenges and opportunities of that work.
Good research can transform public knowledge. It can affect the evolution of public attitudes. But the way in which data and findings are arrayed and framed for consumption matters. A lot. In this episode, Monitor climate writer Stephanie Hanes talks about reporting her story of a climate scientist who had a very public moment of self-reflection 鈥� and found himself reflecting on his role as a shaper of a certain narrative.
Photography does so much to humanize reporting. What does it mean to come at stories quite literally through the 鈥淢onitor lens鈥� that this show explores? A longtime staff shooter who has made images in more than 80 countries and on every continent, Melanie Stetson Freeman talks with host Clay Collins about joyful moments and sobering ones, and about how the people and places she encounters still bring surprises after all of that travel and all of those years. This is an encore presentation of a 2023 episode.
Everyone loves a good counternarrative, especially when the prevailing narrative is a dire one and the counter offers credible reasons for hope 鈥� backed by data that bears up to scrutiny. In this episode, writer Troy Aidan Sambajon talks with host Clay Collins about a crime-stat story that became something more. It鈥檚 a validation 鈥� with some big caveats 鈥� of community policing, community agency, and the central ingredient: a willingness to try building trust.