Christian Science Monitor

Javier Garcia
Lina Franco
Lindsay Duke
Noranda Dellis
http://www.csmonitor.com/

The top three stories featured on the Christian Science Monitor’s page consist of an article outlining Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s motivation for using combative rhetoric, the French leading the fight against a Somali piracy surge, and a journalist’s lighthearted piece on cleaning her fridge out in the spirit of Ramadan.

The Ahmadinejad piece is featured on the top left part of the page with the largest picture. The piece covers the idea of the Shiite messiah being a heavily motivating factor in taking a hard line against the United States and Israel. The article also features a minute and a half sound byte from a reporter recalling past coverage on Iranian devotion to the Shiite messiah. The article had a list of related links leading to one opinion piece and two older reports on Iran.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0924/p06s01-wome.html?page=1

The French piece had no picture but was featured on the top center slot of the page. The article was about the French’s fight against piracy, how the attacks could jeopardize the deliveries of humanitarian aid, and that the attacks were inspiring a call to action from leaders. The article was a summary of reports from AP, The Inquirer, The Daily Telegraph, The Times of London, Voice of America, BBC, Bloomberg, GMANews.TV, and one older report from the CS Monitor. The article had an “Also” section instead of “Related Stories”, which linked to BBC, Bloomberg, and CNN articles.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0923/p99s01-duts.html

The Ramadan piece had no picture either and was featured in the center below the French article. It covered cleaning out the fridge in preparation for Ramadan, shopping at a Middle Eastern grocery, and then provided a recipe for French Orange Cake at the end of the article. No links were provided at the end relating to the story.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0924/p18s01-lifo.html

The site offered a list of the most viewed articles embedded within every article, with no separate page provided listing them all in one place. The most popular article was about the Wall Street bailouts, then school shootings in Finland, and anti-Christian attacks in India. The Iranian article was last on the list.

The site provides a devotion to the blog section, with 11 different blogs based out of a single city and representing a different type of community, such as Boom Towns, Evangelical Epicenters, Military Bastions, and Emptying Nests. The page provides a map of the nation that breaks up each of the counties in to one of the blog categories. The bloggers themselves come from diverse backgrounds and employment. They consist of local politicians, teachers, professors, community activists, newspaper editors, and leaders of non-profit organizations. None are employed by the CS Monitor.

http://www.csmonitor.com/patchworknation/

The readers only given a chance to comment on the blogs provided to them, not on opinion pieces or main articles. Every article provides a link to where you can send a letter to the editor and those responses are confined to a special section where they publish representative letters.

http://www.csmonitor.com/commentary/letters.html

And finally, the CS Monitor gives emphasis by giving the Multimedia tab the only other boldfaced heading other than the Home button. The page gives you all of the most recent audio and video clips posted on the site.

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials