If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.īut you know what? We change lives. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.” My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. “Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”Ībout a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”: “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. “It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Cauz told The New York Times. Nonetheless, the discontinuance of the flagship reference set will be mourned by those for whom “having the Encyclopaedia Britannica on the bookshelf was akin to a station wagon in the garage or a black-and-white Zenith in the den, a possession coveted for its usefulness and as a goalpost for an aspirational middle class,” writes T he New York Times. And though older generations uncomfortable with digital technology prefer print reference materials, the vast majority of students and younger generations simply go online, where material is readily accessible and continuously updated – if slightly less authoritative. Indeed, most libraries have shifted the bulk of their resources to digital materials, though print reference materials continue to be available. The sales of printed encyclopedias have been negligible for several years. "Whereas our online edition is updated continuously. “A printed encyclopedia is obsolete the minute that you print it," Cauz told the AP. Though Wikipedia and Google may be the prevailing research modes of choice today, those who came of age before the instant-access of Internet retain a sense of attachment and goodwill toward Britannica and the authority and reliability its bound volumes represented. Encyclopaedia Britannica's most recent edition sells for $1,395.” As The LA Times’s Jacket Copy blog puts it, “The 11-year-old crowd-sourced encyclopedia is online, and it's free. “This has to do with the fact that now Britannica sells it digital products to a large number of people.”ĭespite his comments, it’s easy to see how Wikipedia, the 11-year-old crowd-sourced encyclopedia, and the rise of similar online research materials have eaten into Encyclopaedia Britannica’s market. President Jorge Cauz in an interview with the AP. “This has nothing to do with Wikipedia or Google,” said Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc. (If you’re interested, it’s yours for $1,395 and there are only 4,000 sets left.) The digital version of the encyclopedia, however, will live on. In an acknowledgment of the shifting media landscape and the increasing reliance on digital references, the company said its current encyclopedia – the 32-volume, 129-pound 2010 edition – will be unavailable once the existing stock runs out. announced Tuesday it will stop publishing print editions of its signature product for the first time in its 244-year history. But now the days of the handsome gold-lettered reference books are over.Įncyclopaedia Britannica Inc. Whether it was a prized possession paid for in installments and lovingly displayed on the top shelf, a neglected doorstop, or simply non-existent in your household, you undoubtedly grew up familiar with the sight of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
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