When Mary Baker Eddy founded The Christian Science Monitor in 1908, she indicated that she wanted it to be a daily newspaper for the home. Here in the newsroom, we have been grappling with what that means for 2026 – a time when readers tend to consume their daily news online (and often out of the home), but also a moment of increased frustration at the ever-growing speed and distraction of digital content.
The newly designed print magazine is part of our effort to implement Mrs. Eddy’s vision, today. With a new layout and a new dedication to bringing you stories you have yet to see online, we are envisioning the magazine as a key part of one integrated Monitor that includes a refreshed website, new digital app, and a beautiful print product.
In the magazine’s pages, we are bringing back some beloved features, including a “Reporters on the Job” section, where our far-flung correspondents share some of what goes on behind the scenes of getting a story. But most important, we are doubling down on our mission to provide a trustworthy accounting of the news in a way that also goes deeper, keeping abreast of the times by recognizing key currents of thought and their impact.
We regularly have conversations in the newsroom about what this means when it comes to our stories – how to get beyond the expected, back-and-forth narrative that can dominate a news cycle, and how to offer readers something more thoughtful and more enlightening.
And we love print for this job.
We want to offer you timely, fair, above-the-fray reporting on the news that just happened. But we also want you to have the opportunity – which can feel all too scarce these days – to read deeply. We want you to have the chance to sit with the magazine like you would an old-school daily newspaper, to contemplate photographs without blue light, to leave an article on your kitchen counter or living room coffee table and come back to it later – without the distraction of pings or notifications.
We want young people to be able to pick up the magazine – like my own children do regularly – and experience the craft of journalism, and the stories we tell, in a spacious, uncynical, screen-free way. (My teenage daughter once told me that she loved reading the Monitor magazine because she learned about the world without “like, being annoyed.”)
We also hope you will have conversations about what you read, share the magazine with others, and find that it helps your own thoughts. In other words, we hope the magazine will be a beloved part of your home. And we hope that it serves to connect you, expansively, to the world around you.
