Giving Rebirth to the Monitor

By William A. Henry III.

Press

A new editor brightens the look and style of a venerable daily

As she stood on the receiving line at her 1950 wedding to Marshall Field IV, whose family owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the debutante whispered hopefully to one of the paper's editors, "Now you have got to give me a job." But it was not until 15 years later, after she had divorced Field and headed north to Alaska in a station wagon, that she at last broke into the ranks of working journalists, as librarian of the Anchorage Daily News at a wage of $2 an hour. She was not impelled by financial needs; she just had her mind set upon having a career. The next year, she married Lawrence Fanning, a former Field deputy, and together they bought the Anchorage paper.

After his death in 1971 left her as owner, editor and publisher of the tiny (20 employees), unprofitable Daily News, Katherine Fanning proved her mettle. She guided the paper to a 1976 Pulitzer Prize for exposing the statewide influence of the Teamsters Union and weathered a succession of financial crises before selling control, at "a modest profit," to the California-based McClatchy chain. So when Fanning left Alaska in May to take on the job of editor of the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor--making it the most prestigious top-editor post in American newspapering now held by a woman--fellow news executives predicted that she would bring her brand of vigorous change to the venerable (founded 1908) but stodgy daily. The Man itor commands an elite following for its international coverage and political analysis and enjoys unusual access to news figures because of its reputation for fairness. But the paper has been losing circulation, and perhaps influence, for more than a decade; it runs a $10 million annual deficit.

In her first few months, Fanning has quietly shuffled editors, pushed for more investigative reporting and sharpened the editorials. This week her reshaping of the Monitor takes an even more dramatic turn: starting with Monday's edition, the once gray tabloid will sport a radically revamped layout and a new and bigger type face, and its number of daily pages will jump from 28 to 40. Page One will carry several stories, including a feature to be typeset with ragged right edges; the second page will become primarily an expanded index; the rest of the paper will be structured into distinct sections, each with its opening cover page. Says Fanning: "We are attempting to fit into the fast pace of life. People cannot pore through a paper these days."

An urgent sense of timeliness is not normally associated with the staff of the Monitor, which has had a reputation for keeping 8-to-4:30 bankers' hours--nor, for that matter, with the act of receiving the paper, which is distributed almost entirely by mail. The Monitor, moreover, is not a commercial venture that must answer to the marketplace but the official voice of the prosperous First Church of Christ, Scientist. The founder, Mary Baker Eddy, declared that Christian Science had a religious duty to publish the paper. All the senior editors are Christian Scientists (Fanning converted in 1965, in the wake of her divorce). So are most of the reporters. Representatives of the church's board watch over the paper, and staff members admit that church values are edited into the coverage. Chief among subjects the Monitor downplays: medicine, which the church rejects in favor of prayer.

Fanning's editorial reconception of the paper, aided by Design Consultant Robert Lockwood, who has also advised the Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas Morning News and Baltimore Sun, was carried out in tandem with an aggressive circulation and advertising plan developed by John Hoagland, the paper's chief business executive. One key decision was to drop the paper's regional sections and publish a single national edition.

The two executives were given a mandate for change by the church's board, which has grown discontented with mounting losses and, even more, the drop in U.S. circulation from 240,000 in the late 1960s to 150,000 last year (the Monitor also distributes a weekly edition to 16,000 subscribers). The paper's readers tend to be faithful, but they have been dying off without being replaced: 39% are 65 or older, while only 28% are under 45. Admits Hoagland: "We should not take a loyal readership for granted." The age of the Monitor's following is in turn a factor in discouraging advertisers, even though the readership is affluent (median household income: $32,000). Thus the paper now contains only about 25% advertising, compared with up to 60% in many other dailies, a level that Hoagland suggests the Monitor could some day reach. Says he:

"Circulation and advertising should keep pace with the quality of the editorial content."

The new regime is not altogether popular with the staff. Some Monitor reporters complain that the resources being spent on redesign and business promotion are diverted from more substantial news coverage. Fanning has also offended some veterans by diminishing the roles of elderly Monitor stars, including Godfrey Sperling Jr., 68, who was shifted from Washington bureau chief to columnist. More fundamental, some staff members fret that the paper's highbrow tone may be lowered. In the cultural section, for example, Fanning plans to give added space and emphasis to leisure and recreation.

Among her editorial peers around the country, Fanning is noted as a voice for restraint. She is chairman of the ethics committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and during a panel discussion of privacy issues at A.S.N.E.'s convention in May, she said that "the public reaction to the press is finally getting through, and it may lead to a more humane journalism." Says Publisher James Hoge of the Sun-Times: "Fanning is always asking a series of questions to get your opinion on this or that. Yet she does not edit a paper by public opinion polls, but by her conscience." At gatherings of news executives, Fanning seemingly commands perhaps more attention than any other woman except Katherine Graham, owner of the Washington Post.

Weeks before Fanning was chosen to run a paper entirely on her own merits, her son Frederick Field and his half brother Marshall Field V put the paper where she never got a job, the Sun-Times, up for sale. The decision "saddened" Fanning. But she reacted in a way that might serve as her axiom in giving rebirth to the Monitor. Said she: "I hate to see traditions die. But I do not believe in tradition for tradition's sake." --By William A. Henry III.

Reported by Richard Hornik/Boston

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