Article February 22, 1913 Issue

One of the most interesting developments of newspaper...

Australian Review

One of the most interesting developments of newspaper enterprise of recent years is the phenomenal success of a Boston two-cent daily newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor, which is not a proselytizing sheet or a religious paper in the usual meaning of the term, but a genuine, up-to-date newspaper of the highest class. Four years ago its first issue appeared as a pioneer of clean journalism, a newspaper which was professedly "to injure no man, but to bless all mankind." Perhaps because of the object thus expressed, or probably because of its title, but more likely because if it adhered to its professed mission to provide only clean and wholesome reading it would have necessarily to exclude from its news sheets every item of salacious scandal and withhold from its advertising pages everything of immoral or degrading tendency, its early failure was predicted by all but the characteristically optimistic Christian Scientists.

The prediction never came near fulfilment, for the paper was an unqualified success from the start. During the Republican national convention at Chicago, it established a record by accomplishing with complete success a daring and original journalistic feat. Instead of depending on copy transmitted to headquarters through the time-honored medium of "our own reporter," it rented space in a vacant store adjoining the convention meeting place, and installed for the occasion a new and complete printing plant, with business office and editorial rooms, and issued a special daily edition during the continuance of the meetings. The high editorial standard and typographical excellence of the Boston publication characterized the temporary edition, and the Chicago Inland Printer, in an appreciative comment on the efficiency with which the work of installation and organization was carried through, expresses the opinion that "the enterprise and progressiveness of The Christian Science Monitor are as worthy of respect as the high standard it has set in the cleanliness and wholesomeness of its reading matter."

In addition to the telegraphic services of the United Press Association, the Monitor has correspondents throughout the world who regularly supply items of general interest and information, thus making the paper readable and instructive long after the date of issue. The Monitor has a considerable Australian circulation, and we understand it has been admitted to the Victorian prisons, the responsible official having recognized in the scope and nature of its contents, which include no items of criminal information, and in its freedom from sectarian bias, features which render it specially suitable as a prison newspaper.

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