The Christian Science Monitor

About Monitor Breakfast

Former President Bill Clinton participates in Monitor Breakfast

“These little groups of reporters that meet with public figures come and go,” said Richard L. Strout, an imposingly tall, brilliant, and acerbic Washington correspondent for the Monitor.

It was one of the few times that Strout, who won a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary from Washington, was wrong about life in the nation’s capital.

Strout’s dismissive comment was aimed at a forum launched on February 8,1966 by Monitor correspondent Godfrey Sperling, Jr. The idea was that Washington reporters would gather for a meal and interview a major public figure in a civilized, comprehensive way.

Now, more than 42 years later, there have been nearly 3,600 Monitor breakfasts.  Guests  have included four US presidents, five vice presidents, as well as countless cabinet officers and congressional leaders.   The Washington Post called the breakfasts “one of Washington’s premier journalistic forums.”   This webpage will share some of the breakfasts’ rich history.  

Strangely enough, the Monitor breakfast story begins with a lunch.  Sperling invited Monitor colleague Dick Strout and nine other reporters from other major newspapers to have lunch with Charles Percy.  A former Bell & Howell executive, Percy was a friend of Sperling’s and was running for the US Senate from Illinois.  During the gathering at the National Press Club, candidate Percy discussed his presidential ambitions.  The session “made a lot of ripples so I had another,” Sperling explained to author Nora Ephron, who wrote a sarcastic essay about Monitor breakfasts in her book “Scribble Scribble.”

Why did Sperling choose a breakfast for his second and most of his subsequent meetings with public officials?  The morning time slot was convenient for guests and for reporters, most of whose filing deadlines came later in the day.  And breakfast was a time when no one in the hard drinking press corps of that era would expect booze to be served, an issue  for teetotaler Sperling, a devout Christian Scientist.  So the time period stuck. 

Strout’s prediction of early oblivion proved wrong, in part because of Sperling’s relentless efforts to line up newsworthy guests.  The first dozen speakers included five presidential aspirants: Percy, New York Mayor John Lindsay, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Senator Robert Kennedy.  The meeting with Kennedy made the most news.  He moved during the course of breakfast from saying a presidential run was “inconceivable” to a virtual declaration of his intention to oppose sitting President Lyndon B. Johnson.

It was not immediately clear how much appetite reporters would have for the breakfasts.  Only two were held the first year and seven the next.  But by election year 1968, the gatherings were taking place roughly every other week.  In recent years, the pace is about one a week, depending on the flow of news and guests’ willingness to appear.

As a relentlessly nonprofit operation, the Monitor’s Washington bureau does not have a dining room.  So most of the gatherings have been held in a private function room at the St. Regis Hotel, a quiet, elegant spot across the street from the Monitor’s Washington office.  But the group has also met in the State Dining Room at the White House; at Blair House, the presidential guest residence; at Senator Edward Kennedy’s estate in McLean, Virginia; by the bedside of Gov. George Wallace who was recovering from an assassination attempt; in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s conference room; and at the site of various political conventions.   

The breakfasts are closely tied to the goal of unselfish service through journalism that the Monitor’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy, set for the paper.  In a world of attack-dog, sound-bite journalism, the Monitor breakfasts encourage in-depth, civilized conversation among reporters and newsmakers.  The goal is light, not heat.  Guest speakers and their staff members often report that the atmosphere at Monitor breakfasts is very different from what they experience elsewhere in Washington.

While politicians are increasingly sophisticated about staying “on message” during all public appearances, the civil tone of the Monitor breakfasts sometimes produces an unexpected bout a candor from guests.  As a December 2001 New York Times story on the breakfasts noted, “politicians were made to feel comfortable. Sometimes too comfortable.”   Among other notable admissions,

When they are not making remarks that trigger news stories, breakfast guests are providing reporters with useful background for future stories.  And many reporters  would argue that they pick up clues to character by being able to observe officials perform at close range.  

The counter view to that argument comes from Nora Ephron who observed in her bvook that, “How a politician performs does not prove anything about his ability except for his ability to hornswoggle journalists and pay his respects to their egos.”

Over the years, the breakfasts have adapted to changes in society and in the media.  For example, the early breakfasts were an all male club.  One had to be a columnist or bureau chief at a small circle of organizations to be invited.   There were very few women in those roles.  Today, breakfast attendees are a much more diverse group both in terms of sex and age.  Columnists and reporters for roughly 35 newspapers, newsmagazines, and broadcast network political blogs are invited to attend. 

The sessions used to be on background, so guests could not be quoted directly and tape recorders were not allowed.   Now the meetings are on the record, meaning guests can be quoted directly.  A small video camera from csmonitor.com captures the sessions so that video excerpts can appear on the Monitor’s website. 

The media foodchain has changed profoundly since the breakfasts began.  TV  -- both cable and broadcast – is vastly more important to policymakers than in the 1960’s and 70’s.  Consequently, the print press has less influence in Washington.   As a result, the breakfast group has a harder time competing with TV outlets for top ranked guests.  Still, the breakfast group continues to draw major figures and to make news.  In some ways, newspapers and magazines find the breakfast forum even more useful than they did before TV became so powerful. 

For better or worse, the breakfasts are a market driven activity.  The news organizations which attend are charged a pro rata share of the food costs while the Monitor pays the salary for the host and support staff.  But given tighter budgets for all newspapers, reporters vote with their feet, showing up only for the breakfasts that they feel will be useful. 

One guest who has been considered supremely useful through the decades has been Robert Strauss, founding partner of the Akin Gump law firm as well as former Democratic National Committee Chairman and US Ambassador to the Soviet Union.  At a breakfast anniversary celebration, Strauss summed up the reason he thought the Monitor breakfast has succeeded.   “Find a good thing and then stick with it, “ he said.