After the Capitol quashed the revolution, the government wanted to demonstrate the authority it had over the rebellious districts and so it established the competition known as the Hunger Games. As punishment for the revolution, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen – in a ceremony called "reaping" – from each district in Panem and these children are then required to participate in the Games. The 24 competitors, called "tributes," are taken to the Capitol and put inside an arena built by the government, where they are forced to fight to the death. Only one tribute is allowed to survive and that one is then declared the winner. During the Games, the government will send in obstacles or interfere in other ways to make the Games more exciting or to force the tributes to fight. The Games are televised and thought of as enjoyable television viewing by citizens of the Capitol.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About 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”:
“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. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. 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.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. 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 have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
