Thus wherever, for instance, freedom is an issue, the Monitor is there. It covered black South Africa's search for freedom for over three decades. One of the few publications Nelson Mandela was allowed to read during most of his 37 years in prison was the Monitor. Many of his ideas, his moderation, his sense of forgiveness, his feel for demoncracy, his humility probably came, in part, from reading the Monitor. When later he made his first trip to the United States, he insisted on stopping by the Monitor's Boston headquarters to see where the paper he had so long read was published and to meet its editors.
Every newspaper is unique, if only because the community it covers is unique.
But there has been in recent decades a homogenization of newspapers. They have begun to look alike. There was a time when the Louisville Courier Journal was distinctive, as was the St. Louis Post-Dispatch or the Milwaukee Sentinal or Atlanta Constitution. Now, with the use of color and graphics, they all look alike. And they all use the same syndicated news and cartoons and features.