This note in today’s Christian Science Monitor informs the world of something that I learned of only on Sunday, namely that at the end of June all five other regular CSM columnists and I are to be given the axe.
It has all been (and felt) rather sudden, especially since for some months I’d been talking to Josh Burek, my editor there, about doing more columns for them than hitherto. Or more precisely, about reverting to my original arrangement with them, which was for two columns per month.
So the column I write for the CSM next week will be the last in a series dating back 17 years. Maybe it’s a good time for a break. Time to look at many other options. I can’t help feeling regretful, though, since the Monitor has been a good paper to work with and for. Back in the 1970s, veteran Monitor foreign-news journos Geoffrey Godsell and Joe Harsch taught me a tremendous amount about both the news business and the value of investing time trying to seek out “the story behind the story”, or the “bigger picture” behind the epiphenomena that make it to the news pages of most other, more competition-driven, major news media.
In our conversation Sunday, Josh said he’d continue to welcome my contributions to the paper’s Opinion pages. Good. I’m looking at a number of other options, as well.
This change has come at a slightly complex time for me. Right now I’m in the Rocky Mountains, having driven 1,660 miles here from Virginia over the past four days along with my daughter Lorna, who’s on her way to take up a job in Los Angeles. Thursday I’m flying back to DC to complete on the purchase of a small apartment that Bill and I will use as a pied-a-terre when we’re in the nation’s capital. I am planning to spend a lot more time in DC over the months ahead. It feels like a good time to do this.
Anyway, that road-trip explains the sparseness of my recent posting here. I’ll resume my normal rhythm as soon as I can.
15 thoughts on “Changes ahead at the CSM”
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I’m sorry to read this. It looks like double-speak. Why do they put it like that? It looks like a mean cost-cutting thing pretending to be an improvement. I wonder what the paying readers think about it?
A week in politics is a long time but 17 years with a newspaper is impressive. Never mind a gold, you ought to get a solid gold Olympia manual typewriter.
After discovering your blog a few months ago, I have become a regular reader and fan. Your knowledge, insight and perspective make for an informative and challenging read. Be sure to keep those of us who love your blog informed of your situation. Best wishes, regards…and don’t worry about the future!
Definitely the CSM’s loss!
Shucks! My husband and I started subscribing to the CSM in the 70’s when we lived in Winnipeg. We looked to the CSM, particularly John Cooley and then you, for informed opinions on the Middle East. We hope that you will continue to write an op-ed piece often — the CSM readership needs your well-researched and thoughtful writing.
Helena, I am surprised by the action of CSM. I will not renew my subscription with them, I am glad that I did renew for only 6 months and not for a whole year as I usually did.
It seems that blogs like yours, Juan Cole, Patrick Lang will be the main source of good information and smart intelligent commentary – without propaganda. I thought when I escaped from behind the iron curtain decades ago, that in the “free West” I would never again need to think about ‘propaganda’ and that I would need to read between the lines of “Pravda” to learn the truth. How times have changed !
Or maybe not, only one gets wiser with age?
Thanks again for your service to us all.
‘Swimmer’ (against most tides)
Hi Helena,
I’m sorry to hear that they suppressed your column and hope that you’ll find a good replacement for that job.
I also hope that it doesn’t mean the CSM now wants more mainstrean journalists, of the kind who simply write out what the WH wants.
Congratulation for your new appartement.
Christiane
It will be intersting to hear the “range” of these new “voices” the CSM has selected in favour of its exisitng columnists. They’ve carried some pretty loopy opinion pieces of late. Interesting too to watch for these new CSM links into the internet, already a clearly familiar territory for you, Helena. I guess you may now be able to put out books at a faster rate and work on further developing your internet presence to feed and market that. Colaberation with news sites, maybe a podcast? And how about internet based workshops on peace issues, run through your blog. I’m far more concerned about your family’s new appartment. Try and be careful in DC. Why not just completley reloacte to NZ, we have broadband now, hardly any smog as you know and it is still safe to walk downtown at night! You would not be our first american refugee.
Just saw this on As`ad Abu Khalil’s blog:
The Christan Science Monitor conveniently dismisses the “critical” columnists: “By July, the Opinion section’s current regular columns will end. We thank John Hughes, Daniel Schorr, Pat Holt, Helena Cobban, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Dante Chinni for their years of expert analysis and opinion.” My source is telling me that independent opinions have been increasingly shut out.
Roland, I did not know you were in NZ. I have been looking for a new home for a while now (and more seriously since 2004!), mostly in the Middle East, but I admit that NZ sounds extremely attractive (AND I have some family members there). Any idea what it would take to establish residency there?
Hi Shirin I’ve posted you the key NZ Immigration links, from http://www.immigration.govt.nz but I guess as there are a number they are filtered and held over for checking. Hopefully they will appear above yhis post soon. Basicly you can check eligibility online. Let me know how it looks.
Thanks Roland.
Wouldn’t it be funny if I, who am a U.S. citizen, would need to be sponsored by my family members who immigrated there from Iraq? I would love that, actually!
Well Shirin we probably get more Iraqi immigrants in NZ than the US:) And in NZ law family is family, no matter where from. We don’t have a Constitution to ignore but we do have a Human Rights Commission, which requires that our laws are non-discriminatory.
If you are under 56 years of age and have a profession, can secure an offer of employment or can set up a business, along with your highly fluent english, you stand a good chance of being accepted. There is not only the usual skill shortage here, but for the last few years we have had close to full employment as well. And you will find the people here are generally very friendly and welcoming. The #1 song in our music charts for many weeks during 2005 was a song called “Welcome Home” (by Dave Dobbyn) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQV0c2D0Lho a song about welcoming immigrants, sung here at the unveiling of a war memorial. Do that online test at the NZ immigration website.
The CSM’s reporting on the Middle East had always been superior because of the ethical basis upon which the paper was founded, and it’s lack of advertising, which removed a powerful lever for influencing the news. It’s very bad news if they’re seeking to become more like everybody else. It won’t save their circulation.
IMO your voice is rare and valuable to us, Helena. Unfortunately this looks like another case (cf William Pfaff) of a clear-eyed analyst being sidelined for being too out of line with prevailing prejudice.
Good luck. Pure reportage is always an endangered profession. Pure opinion is risky, too, unless allied to power or majority preferences.
Looks like the CSM will replace the colunists with op-ed material it can get for free from lobby groups, think tanks, and public officials. I doubt they will turn the space over to expanded “Letters to the Editor” from J.Q. Public. But, who knows? Perhaps a column by the National Association of Homebuilders or MALDEF on the virtues of open immigration will pack more punch than a piece by someone who pretends to be impartial. Maybe the views on Mideast affairs will be sourced from people on the payroll of various “institutes” underwritten by big companies, billionaire trusts, or governments. They need no honorarium and might also assist sales of advertising space. Ah, yes, the old bottom line. Oh, and publish a column by little so-and-so and you win a lunch with Big So-And-So.
Seems that not only political columnists are axed. Even Ruth Walker who ran the Verbal Energy Blog, seeems to have disappeared. The blog remains, unsigned. In France we used to call such facts as ” primacy of infrastructures”. By the way, I am confirmed in my view that George Orwell is the definitive political thinker of the 21st Century.